Blood and Guts in High School Quotes

“Love goes away when your mind goes away and then you're someone else.”
― Kathy Acker, Blood and Guts in High School

“Pain is the world. I don't have anywhere to run.”
― Kathy Acker, Blood and Guts in High School

“IF THERE IS A GOD, GOD IS DISJUNCTION AND MADNESS.”
― Kathy Acker, Blood and Guts in High School

“Every day a sharp tool, a powerful destroyer, is necessary to cut away dullness, lobotomy, buzzing, belief in human beings, stagnancy, images, and accumulation. As soon as we stop believing in human beings, rather know we are dogs and trees, we'll start to be happy.”
― Kathy Acker, Blood and Guts in High School

“Another reason Hawthorne set his story in the past (in lies) was 'cause he couldn't say directly all the wild things he wanted to say. He was living in a society to which ideas and writing still mattered. In 'The Custom House', the introduction to The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne makes sure he tells us the story of The Scarlet Letter occurred long ago and has nothing to do with anyone who's now living. After all, Hawthorne had to protect himself so he could keep writing. Right now I can speak as directly as I want 'cause no one gives a shit about writing and ideas, all anyone cares about is money. Even if one person in Boise, Idaho, gave half-a-shit, the only book Mr Idaho can get his hands on is a book the publishers, or rather the advertisers ('cause all businessmen are now advertisers) have decided will net half-a-million in movie and/or TV rights. A book that can be advertised. Define culture that way.”
― Kathy Acker, Blood and Guts in High School

“Without language the only people the rebels can kill are themselves.”
― Kathy Acker, Blood and Guts in High School

“Let me put it another way. Most people are what they sense and if all you see day after day is a mat on a floor that belongs to the rats and four walls with tiny piles of plaster at the bottom, and all you eat is starch, and all you hear is continuous music, you smell garbage and piss which drips through the walls continually, and all the people you know live like you, it's not horrible, it's just... Who they are.”
― Kathy Acker, Blood and Guts in High School

“Heart disease syphilis pregnancy
All you creeps on the street get away from me”
― Kathy Acker, Blood and Guts in High School

“One of the most destructive forces in the world is love. For the following reason: The world is a conglomeration of objects, no, of events and the approaching of events towards objects, therefore of becoming stases static stagnant, of all that is unreal. You get in the world, you get your daily life your routine doesn't matter if you're rich poor legal illegal, you begin to believe what doesn't change is real, and love comes along and shows all these unchangeable for ever fixtures to be flimsy paper bits. Love can tear anything to shreds.”
― Kathy Acker, Blood and Guts in High School

“All the people around Hester hate her and despise her and think she's a total freak. The kid's beyond human law and human consideration. How do you feel about yourself when every human being you hear and see and smell every day of your being thinks you're worse than garbage? Your conception of who you are has always, at least partially, depended on how the people around you behaved towards you... You don't know. How can you know anything? How can you know anything? You begin to go crazy.”
― Kathy Acker, Blood and Guts in High School

“Some folks like trains,
some folks like ships,

I like the way you move you hips
All I want is a taste of your lips,
boy,
All I want is a taste of your lips.”
― Kathy Acker, Blood and Guts in High School

“Even if we die, if we have to become monsters and everyone hates us, we have to read the book because it will teach us how to avoid the alligator’s jaws, the wolves who wait in the forest, the huge snakes, and how to become birds.”
― Kathy Acker, Blood and Guts in High School

“Without language the only thing the rebels can kill is themselves.”
― Kathy Acker, Blood and Guts in High School

“OK. You don't know. How can you know anything? How can you know anything? You begin to go crazy.”
― Kathy Acker, Blood and Guts in High School

“don’t get into the writer’s personal life thinking if you like the books you’ll like the writer. A writer’s personal life is horrible and lonely. Writers are queer so keep away from them.”
― Kathy Acker, Blood and Guts in High School: A Novel

“Writers create what they do out of their own frightful agony and blood and mushed-up guts and horrible mixed-up insides. The more they are in touch with their insides the better they create.”
― Kathy Acker, Blood and Guts in High School: A Novel

“Why did you get stoned?’ the Persian slave trader asked me this morning. In ‘primitive’ ‘wild’ societies like Haiti the word ‘why’ doesn’t exist.”
― Kathy Acker, Blood and Guts in High School: A Novel

“Cause I'm sick too.
At this point sicker than you.
My disease is forever.
I know no comfort.
Since we're both maniacs,
let's be nice to each other.
I myself want to live.
I want to burn.
all I ask is no one loves me
in return.”
― Kathy Acker, Blood and Guts in High School

“There are no pictures or religious representations. A clean people who didn't mess around with their lives, who knew they were only alive once, who disappeared.”
― Kathy Acker, Blood and Guts in High School

“PUKE MUSHY MUSHY I GO MUSHY I AM REPULSIVE. NO I AM HOT. Now we've got it I AM HOT. Oh please fuck me for the rest of my life. The rest of my life means fuck me right now. As hard as you can.”
― Kathy Acker, Blood and Guts in High School

“Punk Rocker: I don’t understand what’s happening. This world is doomed. There’s nothing to believe in. Rich Do-Nothing: The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. The right wing is beginning to show its power in this country. Taxes are abolished and schools are being shut down. Proposition 13 is going to take place all over the country. Everything economic and therefore everything is going to get worse. A Nouveau-Riche Woman (to the rebels): You rebels are so fashionable. You dress in the most cunningly torn rags. Where can I buy rags just like yours?”
― Kathy Acker, Blood and Guts in High School: A Novel

“I walked along a highway. I was looking for a place to sit down, for some grass I could walk in, for a wood I could explore. I walked for hours. All the land on both sides of the highway, cultivated and wild, was private. I had to keep walking on the highway. I thought that people today when they move move only by car, train, boat, or plane and so move only on roads. They perceive only the roads, the map, the prison. I think it’s becoming harder to get off the roads.”
― Kathy Acker, Blood and Guts in High School: A Novel

“I don't even adore my emotions anymore. Whatever the fuck they are. Living locked-up in a slave trader's room is easy. I mean you have the same emotions over and over again, the same thoughts, the same body, and after a while you see it's all in your mind: you're stuck in your mind. SLAVESLAVESLAVE.”
― Kathy Acker, Blood and Guts in High School