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“Don't use the phone. People are never ready to answer it. Use poetry.”
―
―
“Quentin Tarantino is interested in watching somebody's ear getting cut off; David Lynch is interested in the ear.”
― A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments
― A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments
“White people were dangerous and snakes were dangerous and now the two were working together, each doing what the other told it to. She was sure she had seen a snake in a weeded ditch with the head of a white man. Right after she came out of the house on the way to Big Joe's, which she had immediately forgotten, she saw it, long and black and diamond-patterned in the ditch with a white man's head. It had blue eyes. The bluest eyes any white man ever had. She was sure she had seen it. She thought she had seen it. Maybe it was only a dream or a memory of another time. Whatever it was, she still saw it every time she closed her eyes, coiled there on the back of her eyelids, blue-eyed and dangerous.”
― A Feast of Snakes
― A Feast of Snakes
“Life always kills you in the end, but first it prevents you from getting what you want.”
― The Gum Thief
― The Gum Thief
“Did I ever tell you about the man
who taught his asshole to talk?
His whole abdomen would move up and down,
you dig, farting out the words.
It was unlike anything I ever heard.
Bubbly, thick, stagnant sound.
A sound you could smell.
This man worked for the carnival,you dig?
And to start with it was
like a novelty ventriloquist act.
After a while,
the ass started talking on its own.
He would go in
without anything prepared...
and his ass would ad-lib
and toss the gags back at him every time.
Then it developed sort of teethlike...
little raspy incurving hooks
and started eating.
He thought this was cute at first
and built an act around it...
but the asshole would eat its way through
his pants and start talking on the street...
shouting out it wanted equal rights.
It would get drunk, too, and have crying jags.
Nobody loved it.
And it wanted to be kissed,
same as any other mouth.
Finally, it talked all the time,
day and night.
You could hear him for blocks,
screaming at it to shut up...
beating at it with his fists...
and sticking candles up it, but...
nothing did any good,
and the asshole said to him...
"It is you who will shut up
in the end, not me...
"because we don't need you
around here anymore.
I can talk and eat and shit."
After that, he began waking up
in the morning with transparentjelly...
like a tadpole's tail
all over his mouth.
He would tear it off his mouth
and the pieces would stick to his hands...
like burning gasoline jelly
and grow there.
So, finally, his mouth sealed over...
and the whole head...
would have amputated spontaneously
except for the eyes, you dig?
That's the one thing
that the asshole couldn't do was see.
It needed the eyes.
Nerve connections were blocked...
and infiltrated and atrophied.
So, the brain couldn't
give orders anymore.
It was trapped inside the skull...
sealed off.
For a while, you could see...
the silent, helpless suffering
of the brain behind the eyes.
And then finally
the brain must have died...
because the eyes went out...
and there was no more feeling in them
than a crab's eye at the end of a stalk.”
― Naked Lunch: The Restored Text
who taught his asshole to talk?
His whole abdomen would move up and down,
you dig, farting out the words.
It was unlike anything I ever heard.
Bubbly, thick, stagnant sound.
A sound you could smell.
This man worked for the carnival,you dig?
And to start with it was
like a novelty ventriloquist act.
After a while,
the ass started talking on its own.
He would go in
without anything prepared...
and his ass would ad-lib
and toss the gags back at him every time.
Then it developed sort of teethlike...
little raspy incurving hooks
and started eating.
He thought this was cute at first
and built an act around it...
but the asshole would eat its way through
his pants and start talking on the street...
shouting out it wanted equal rights.
It would get drunk, too, and have crying jags.
Nobody loved it.
And it wanted to be kissed,
same as any other mouth.
Finally, it talked all the time,
day and night.
You could hear him for blocks,
screaming at it to shut up...
beating at it with his fists...
and sticking candles up it, but...
nothing did any good,
and the asshole said to him...
"It is you who will shut up
in the end, not me...
"because we don't need you
around here anymore.
I can talk and eat and shit."
After that, he began waking up
in the morning with transparentjelly...
like a tadpole's tail
all over his mouth.
He would tear it off his mouth
and the pieces would stick to his hands...
like burning gasoline jelly
and grow there.
So, finally, his mouth sealed over...
and the whole head...
would have amputated spontaneously
except for the eyes, you dig?
That's the one thing
that the asshole couldn't do was see.
It needed the eyes.
Nerve connections were blocked...
and infiltrated and atrophied.
So, the brain couldn't
give orders anymore.
It was trapped inside the skull...
sealed off.
For a while, you could see...
the silent, helpless suffering
of the brain behind the eyes.
And then finally
the brain must have died...
because the eyes went out...
and there was no more feeling in them
than a crab's eye at the end of a stalk.”
― Naked Lunch: The Restored Text
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