No one owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death.

I'm against Capitol Punishment in all forms, and I have written many pamphlets on this subject in the manner of Swift's Modest Proposal pamphlet incorporated into Naked Lunch; these pamphlets have marked Naked Lunch as an obscene book.

I began to get a feeling familiar to me from my bartending days of being the only sane man in a nuthouse. It doesn't make you feel superior but depressed and scared, because there is nobody you can contact.

How long does it take man to realize that he cannot want what he wants? You have to live in hell to see heaven.

If you talk you always end up with politics, it gets nowhere. I mean man it's strictly from the soft typewriter.

The Nova Mob doesn't have motives, as we understand motives. "Sex is profoundly distasteful to a being of my mineral origin," as a leader of the Nova Mob, Mr. Bradley-Mr. Martin, said on one occasion.

In deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality.