To me it begins and ends with these psychedelic substances. The synergy of the psilocybin in the hominid diet brought us out of the animal mind and into the world of articulated speech and imagination.

And I want to thank all the women that support me. I have wonderful support systems from women of all types who seem dedicated to the notion that Terence McKenna can always be improved. I'm extremely grateful for that. The frontiers are enormous in that dimension.

To carry language from two dimensions into three is the task of the poets, and the rebels in the 20th Century.

What we need to change is our minds, that's the part that's doing us dirt and dragging us under. How can we change our minds.

Drugs induce paranoia and psychosis in people who have never taken any.

I believe reality is a marvelous joke staged for my edification and amusement and everybody is working very hard to make me happy.

I believe that the totemic image for the future is the octopus. This is because the squids and octopi have perfected a form of communication that is both psychedelic and telepathic; a model for the human communications of the future. In the not-too-distant future men and women may shed the monkey body to become virtual octopi swimming in a silicon sea.