Dharma Bums refusing to subscribe to the general demand that they consume production and therefore have to work for the privilege of consuming, all that cramp they didn't really want anyway such as refrigerators, TV sets, cars, at least new fancy cars, certain hair oils and deodorants and general junk you finally always see a week later in the garbage anyway, all of them imprisoned in a system of work, produce, consume, work, produce, consume.

The empty blue sky of space says 'All this comes back to me, then goes again, and comes back again, then goes again, and I don't care, it still belongs to me

Burroughs is the greatest satirical writer since Jonathan Swift. . . . The net result of Naked Lunch will be to make people shudder at their own lies, will be to make them open up and be straight with one another. Swift and Rabelais and Sterne accomplished a step in that direction, and Burroughs another.

I hope it is true that a man can die and yet not only live in others but give them life, and not only life, but that great consciousness of life.

At night I closed my eyes and saw my bones threading the mud of my grave.

I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.

Roaring dreams take place in a perfectly silent mind. Now that we know this, throw the raft away.