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  "title": "Naked Lunch",
  "slug": "naked-lunch",
  "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-s-burroughs/naked-lunch",
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  "author": {
    "name": "William S. Burroughs",
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      "slug": "americans-have-a-special",
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      "text": "Americans have a special horror of giving up control, of letting things happen in their own way without interference. They would like to jump down into their stomachs and digest the food and shovel the shit out.",
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      "slug": "the-face-of-evil",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-s-burroughs/naked-lunch/the-face-of-evil",
      "text": "The face of \"evil\" is always the face of total need. A dope fiend is a man in total need of dope. Beyond a certain frequency need knows absolutely no limit or control. In the words of total need: \"Wouldn't you?\" Yes you would. You would lie, cheat, inform on your friends, steal, do anything to satisfy total need. Because you would be in a state of total sickness, total possession, and not in a position to act in any other way. Dope fiends are sick people who cannot act other than they do. A rabid dog cannot choose but bite.",
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      "slug": "the-end-result",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-s-burroughs/naked-lunch/the-end-result",
      "text": "The end result of complete cellular representation is cancer. Democracy is cancerous, and bureaus are its cancer. A bureau takes root anywhere in the state, turns malignant like the Narcotic Bureau, and grows and grows, always reproducing more of its own kind, until it chokes the host if not controlled or excised. Bureaus cannot live without a host, being true parasitic organisms. (A cooperative on the other hand can live without the state. That is the road to follow. The building up of independent units to meet needs of the people who participate in the functioning of the unit. A bureau operates on opposite principles of inventing needs to justify its existence.) Bureaucracy is wrong as a cancer, a turning away from the human evolutionary direction of infinite potentials and differentiation and independent spontaneous action to the complete parasitism of a virus. (It is thought that the virus is a degeneration from more complex life-form. It may at one time have been capable of independent life. Now has fallen to the borderline between living and dead matter. It can exhibit living qualities only in a host, by using the life of another — the renunciation of life itself, a falling towards inorganic, inflexible machine, towards dead matter.) Bureaus die when the structure of the state collapse. They are as helpless and unfit for independent existence as a displaced tapeworm, or a virus that has killed the host.",
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      "slug": "our-national-drug",
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      "text": "Our national drug is alcohol. We tend to regard the use of any other drug with special horror.",
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      "page": 201,
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      "slug": "the-study-of-thinking",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-s-burroughs/naked-lunch/the-study-of-thinking",
      "text": "The study of thinking machines teaches us more about the brain than we can learn by introspective methods. Western man is externalizing himself in the form of gadgets.",
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      "slug": "last-night-i-woke",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-s-burroughs/naked-lunch/last-night-i-woke",
      "text": "Last night I woke up with someone squeezing my hand. It was my other hand.",
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      "slug": "hustlers-of-the",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-s-burroughs/naked-lunch/hustlers-of-the",
      "text": "Hustlers of the world, there is one Mark you cannot beat: The Mark Inside.",
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      "page": 11,
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      "slug": "the-junk-merchant",
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      "text": "The junk merchant doesn't sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to his product. He does not improve and simplify his merchandise. He degrades and simplifies the client",
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      "text": "A functioning police state needs no police.",
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      "slug": "america-is-not",
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      "text": "America is not a young land: it is old and dirty and evil before the settlers, before the Indians. The evil is there waiting.",
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      "text": "There is only one thing a writer can write about: what is in front of his senses at the moment of writing... I am a recording instrument... I do not presume to impose \"story \"plot\" \"continuity\"... Insofar as I succeed in Direct recording of certain areas of psychic process I may have limited function... I am not an entertainer.",
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      "slug": "you-were-not",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-s-burroughs/naked-lunch/you-were-not",
      "text": "You were not there for the beginning. You will not be there for the end. Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative",
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      "slug": "you-see-control",
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      "text": "You see control can never be a means to any practical end. ... Control can never be a means to anything but more control ... like Junk.",
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