Brion Gysin
John Clifford Brian Gysin, raised in Canada and England, was a peripheral figure in the Beat movement of the mid-20th century.
After serving is the U.S. Army during WWII, he received one of the first Fulbright Fellowships in 1949. A decade later he became closely associated with Beat writer William S. Burroughs. Their popularization of the Dadaist "cut-up technique" are the primary source of Gysin's literary fame.
“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
“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
“Man is a bad animal....”
Brion Gysin
“some trillions of years ago a sloppy, dirty giant flicked grease from his fingers. One of those gobs of grease is our universe on its way to the floor. Splat!”
Brion Gysin
“I enjoy inventing things out of fun. After all, life is a game, not a career.”
Brion Gysin
“Writers don't own their words. Since when do words belong to anybody. "Your very own words," indeed ! And who are you?”
Brion Gysin
“As no two people see the world the same way, all trips from here to there are imaginary; all truth is a tale I am telling myself.”
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