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“One can never read too little of bad, or too much of good books: bad books are intellectual poison; they destroy the mind.
In order to read what is good one must make it a condition never to read what is bad; for life is short, and both time and strength limited.”
― Essays and Aphorisms
In order to read what is good one must make it a condition never to read what is bad; for life is short, and both time and strength limited.”
― Essays and Aphorisms
“The concept of humanity is an especially useful ideological instrument of imperialist expansion, and in its ethical-humanitarian form it is a specific vehicle of economic imperialism. Here one is reminded of a somewhat modified expression of Proudhon’s: whoever invokes humanity wants to cheat. To confiscate the word humanity, to invoke and monopolize such a term probably has certain incalculable effects, such as denying the enemy the quality of being human and declaring him to be an outlaw of humanity; and a war can thereby be driven to the most extreme inhumanity.”
―
―
“I went in; I closed the door. I sat down on the bed. Blackest space extended before me. I was not in this blackness, but at the edge of it, and I confess that it is terrifying. It is terrifying because there is something in it which scorns man and which man cannot endure without losing himself. But he must lose himself; and whoever resists will founder, and whoever goes forward will become this very blackness, this cold and dead and scornful thing in the very heart of which lives the infinite. This blackness stayed next to me, probably because of my fear: this fear was not the fear people know about, it did not break me, it did not pay any attention to me, but wandered around the room the way human things do. A great deal of patience is required if thought, when it has been driven down into the depths of the horrible, is to rise little by little and recognize us and look at us. But I still dreaded that look. A look is very different from what one might think, it has neither light nor expression nor force nor movement, it is silent, but from the heart of the strangeness its silence crosses worlds and the person who hears that silence is changed.”
― Death Sentence
― Death Sentence
“We are two abysses - a well staring at the sky.”
―
―
“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
/lit/ (2025 revival edition)
— 1281 members
— last activity Feb 16, 2026 03:26AM
No fun allowed. Reading top 100 books from the /lit/ chart.
Wilhelm’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Wilhelm’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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