Truth is used to vitalize a statement rather than devitalize it. Truth implies more than a simple statement of fact. "I don't have any whiskey," may be a fact but it is not a truth.

I think that Richard Nixon will go down in history as a true folk hero, who struck a vital blow to the whole diseased concept of the revered image and gave the American virtue of irreverence and skepticism back to the people.

I'm creating an imaginary — it's always imaginary — world in which I would like to live.

My general theory since 1971 has been that the word is literally a virus, and that it has not been recognized as such because it has achieved a state of relatively stable symbiosis with its human host; that is to say, the word virus (the other Half) has established itself so firmly as an accepted part of the human organism that it can now sneer at gangster viruses like smallpox and turn them in to the Pasteur Institute.

I read a lot of books for information, like doctor books, spy books. . . .

A consumer society is about simplfying and degrading the consumer as well as the product.

I knew [Timothy] Leary, but barely knew, didn't really know Jan [Kerouac].