Naked Lunch was from about a thousand pages of material. A lot of it overflowed, then, into the cut-up trilogy including Nova Express.

I see no reason why the artistic world can't absolutely merge with Madison Avenue. Pop art is a move in that direction. Why can't we have advertisements with beautiful words and beautiful images?

When people start talking about their bowel movements, they are inexorable as the processes of which they speak.

Tell the truth once and for all and shut up forever.

Madness is confusion of levels of fact. . . . Madness is not seeing visions but confusing levels.

Death was in every sell of his body. He gave off a faint, greenish steam of decay. Lee imagined he would glow in the dark.

In deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality. It is as final as the mountains: a fact. There it is. When you realize it you cannot complain.