Gysin Quotes

You should never do two things. You should hammer one nail all your life, and I didn't do that; I hammered on a lot of nails like a xylophone. ~ Brion Gysin

The resulting texts always took a narrative term, enigmatic at first but ultimately explicit and often premonitory. The semantic distribution of these basic elements diverted them from their original meaning, thus revealing their real significance. Henceforth, every form of writing will consist of an operation of decoding, of contamination, and of sense perversion. All this because all language is essentially mystification, and everything is fiction. ~ Brion Gysin

Writing is fifty years behind painting. ~ Brion Gysin

Man is a bad animal.... ~ Brion Gysin

I could easily blast so much keef night and day I become a bouhali; a real-gone crazy, a holy untouchable madman unto whom everything is permitted, nothing is true. ~ Brion Gysin

The idea was that we would decide the order when we looked at the proofs. I remember Brion Gysin saying "Well, why change it? It's perfect the way it is, the way it came from the printer." Made one major change, that is, the first chapter that came from the printers, which would be the beginning, we moved to the end. The first chapter became the last chapter. There's no actual cutups in Naked Lunch. ~ William S. Burroughs

When you get to be my age there are more and more people you have known that you miss. Brion [Gysin], Antony Balch, Ian Summerville are ones I think of right away I was quite close to. ~ William S. Burroughs

The first person who really showed me the ugly spirit was Brion Gysin. "The ugly spirit shot Joan because ... " and I never found out why. This Brion wrote out on a piece of paper in a sort of trance state. ~ Allen Ginsberg

I enjoy inventing things out of fun. After all, life is a game, not a career. ~ Brion Gysin

OFFICERS OF OUR GUERILLA MUST BE POETS.
THE AREA OF POETRY MUST BE CONSTANTLY RE-CREATED.
- Brion Gysin, Guerrilla Conditions, nd. ~ Brion Gysin

The poets are supposed to liberate the words – not chain them in phrases. Who told the poets they were supposed to think? Poets are meant to sing and to make words sing. Writers don't own their words. Since when do words belong to anybody? 'Your very own words,' indeed! And who are you? ~ Brion Gysin