If you build a good name, eventually, that name will be its own currency.

There is in fact something obscene and sinister about photography, a desire to imprison, to incorporate, a sexual intensity of pursuit.

There couldn't be a society of people who didn't dream. They'd be dead in two weeks.

Junk takes everything and gives nothing but insurance against junk sickness.

It is to be remembered that the origin of all the arts-music, painting and writing-is magical and evocative; and that magic is always used to obtain some definite result.

It's a tract against capital punishment in the genre of Swift's Modest Proposal. I was simply following a formula to its logical conclusion. Some people appear to have understood it. The publication of Naked Lunch in England practically coincided with their abolition of capital punishment. The book obviously had a certain effect.

Like pregnant women lose their teeth feeding the stranger, junkies lose their yellow fangs feeding the monkey.