Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape.

In my writing I am acting as a map maker, an explorer of psychic areas, a cosmonaut of inner space, and I see no point in exploring areas that have already been thoroughly surveyed.

Which came first the intestine or the tapeworm?

Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing.

Hustlers of the world, there is one mark you cannot beat: the mark inside.

Language is a virus from outer space.

Every man has inside himself a parasitic being who is acting not at all to his advantage.

Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape.

Like all pure creatures, cats are practical.

The only possible ethic is to do what one wants to do.

A cat's rage is beautiful, burning with pure cat flame, all its hair standing up and crackling blue sparks, eyes blazing and sputtering.

A functioning police state needs no police.

The aim of education is the knowledge, not of facts, but of values.

The face of evil is always the face of total need.

Be just and if you can't be just, be arbitrary.

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

Man is an artifact designed for space travel. He is not designed to remain in his present biologic state any more than a tadpole is designed to remain a tadpole.

Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer.

In deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality.

Our national drug is alcohol. We tend to regard the use any other drug with special horror.

Sometimes paranoia's just having all the facts.

The cat does not offer services. The cat offers itself. Of course he wants care and shelter. You don't buy love for nothing.

You can't fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.

Happiness is a byproduct of function, purpose, and conflict; those who seek happiness for itself seek victory without war.

Admittedly, a homosexual can be conditioned to react sexually to a woman, or to an old boot for that matter. In fact, both homo - and heterosexual experimental subjects have been conditioned to react sexually to an old boot, and you can save a lot of money that way.

Black magic operates most effectively in preconscious, marginal areas. Casual curses are the most effective.

The way to kill a man or a nation is to cut off his dreams, the way the whites are taking care of the Indians: killing their dreams, their magic, their familiar spirits.

Perhaps all pleasure is only relief.

A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on.

Smash the control images. Smash the control machine.

After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say 'I want to see the manager.'

After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it. I sure as hell wouldn't want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military.

Junk is the ideal product... the ultimate merchandise. No sales talk necessary. The client will crawl through a sewer and beg to buy.

I am getting so far out one day I won't come back at all.

Anything that can be done chemically can be done by other means.

Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative.

Most of the trouble in this world has been caused by folks who can't mind their own business, because they have no business of their own to mind, any more than a smallpox virus has.

Nothing is true, everything is permitted.

Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact.

How I hate those who are dedicated to producing conformity.

Americans have a special horror of giving up control, of letting things happen in their own way without interference.

Changes... can only be effected by alterations in the original. The only thing not prerecorded in a prerecorded universe are the prerecordings themselves. The copies can only repeat themselves word for word. A virus is a copy. You can pretty it up, cut it up, scramble it - it will reassemble in the same form.

Gentle reader, the Fountain of Youth is radioactive, and those who imbibe its poisonous heavy waters will suffer the hideous fate of decaying metal. Yet almost without exception, the wretched idiot inhabitants of our benighted planet would gulp down this radioactive excrement if it were offered.

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?

I started to write in about 1950; I was thirty-five at the time; there didn't seem to be any strong motivation. I simply was endeavoring to put down in a more or less straightforward journalistic style something about my experiences with addiction and addicts.

If everyone is to be made responsible for everything they do, you must extend responsibility beyond the level of conscious intention.

In the U.S., you have to be a deviant or die of boredom.

Love? What is it? Most natural painkiller.

My relationships with my cats has saved me from a deadly, pervasive ignorance.