Why don't you put something on the phonograph, a low-down mean blue. Play it over and over again until you crack it and get sick o...f it and then go back to work. I do it all the time.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
This is a war universe. War all the time. That is its nature. There may be other universes based on all sorts of other principles,... but ours seems to be based on war and games.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Everyone Tarrou set eyes on had that vacant gaze, and was visibly suffering from the complete break with all that life had meant t...o him. And since they could not be thinking of their death all the time, they thought of nothing... "For really to think about someone means thinking about that person every minute of the day, without letting one's thoughts be diverted by anything; by meals, by a fly that settles on someone's cheek, by household duties, or by a sudden itch somewhere. But there are always flies and itches. That's why life is difficult to live."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Cats of all kinds weave in and out of the text; Burroughs has clearly taken to them in a big way in his old age and seems torn bet...ween a fear they will betray him into sentimentality and a resigned acceptance that a man can't be ironic all the time.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Men are all right for friends, but as soon as you marry them they turn into cranky old fathers, even the wild ones. They begin to ...tell you what's sensible and what's foolish, and want you to stick at home all the time. I prefer to be foolish when I feel like it, and be accountable to nobody.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I tell people all the time, you have to be in love with that pot. You have to put all your love in that pot. If you're in a hurry,... just eat your sandwich and go. Don't even start cooking, because you can't do anything well in a hurry. I love food. I love serving people. I love satisfying people.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
All this stuff you heard about America not wanting to fight, wanting to stay out of the war, is a lot of horse dung. Americans, tr...aditionally, love to fight. All real Americans love the sting of battle.... Americans play to win all the time. I wouldn't give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That's why Americans have never lost--and will never lose--a war, because the very thought of losing is hateful to Americans.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There's a point of poverty at which the spirit isn't with the body all the time. It finds the body really too unbearable. So it's ...almost as if you were talking to the soul itself. And a soul's not properly responsible.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Living, just by itself--what a dirge that is! Life is a classroom and Boredom's the usher, there all the time to spy on you; whate...ver happens, you've got to look as if you were awfully busy all the time doing something that's terribly exciting--or he'll come along and nibble your brain.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »