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.

Prison is where you promise yourself the right to live.

Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion.

...and performing our one and noble function of the time, move.

Suppose we suddenly wake up and see that what we thought to be this and that, ain't this and that at all?

Rather, I think one should write, as nearly as possible, as if he were the first person on earth and was humbly and sincerly putting on paper that which he saw and experienced and loved and lost; what his passing thoughts were and his sorrows and desires.

I just won't sleep," I decided. There were so many other interesting things to do.