Sean

“Burroughs’ conversation with Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh and Jerry Casale covers a dizzying array of topics—from Jordache jeans to religious fundamentalism to the likelihood of America becoming a fascist state. It’s also laugh-out-loud funny: JOHN CASALE: William, you and David Bowie had a discussion in Rolling Stone in 1974 about whether to use sonic warfare onstage. Bowie said he was not interested in doing that to people. He said he would never turn it on a crowd and make them shit their pants. I suppose we would. . . . WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS: In a sense, if any artist is successful, he would do exactly that. If you wrote about death completely convincingly, you’d kill all your readers. JC: What’s going too far, though? Making them shit their pants? WSB: Would it be going too far to kill them? I’ll ask that question. JC: Well, I suppose there’s still some liberalism left in Devo; we’d say yes. We want ’em to come back and shit again.48”
― Casey Rae, William S. Burroughs and the Cult of Rock 'n' Roll

“No man can rob successfully over a period of years without pleasing the people he robs.”
― Theodore Sturgeon, The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon, Volume II: Microcosmic God

“It’s strange how you’re sometimes forced to assume an unsympathetic view of yourself through borrowed eyes.”
― Thomas Ligotti, Songs of a Dead Dreamer

“The normal process of life contains moments as bad as any of those which insane melancholy is filled with, moments in which radical evil gets its innings and takes its solid turn. The lunatic’s visions of horror are all drawn from the material of daily fact. Our civilization is founded on the shambles, and every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony. If you protest, my friend, wait until you arrive there yourself. (The Varieties of Religious Experience, 1902)”
― Thomas Ligotti, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror