Panic is the sudden realization that everything around you is alive.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the awareness that life exists all around us, which can lead to feelings of panic when we truly understand this reality.
William S. Burroughs suggests that panic arises from a deep and sudden awareness of the liveliness of our surroundings. This realization can be overwhelming, as it compels us to recognize that everything in our environment has its own vitality and existence, invoking a sense of urgency and disorientation as we confront the complexity of life.
In practice
In a discussion about awareness in art, one might use this quote to highlight the artist's connection to their subject.
God save the Queen and a fascist regime β¦ a flabby toothless fascism, to be sure. Never go too far in any direction, is the basic law on which Limey-Land is built. The Queen stabilizes the whole sinking shithouse and keeps a small elite of wealth and privilege on top. The English have gone soft in the outhouse. England is like some stricken beast too stupid to know it is dead. Ingloriously foundering in its own waste products, the backlash and bad karma of empire
Like most qualities, cuteness is delineated by what it isn't. Most people aren't cute at all, or if so they quickly outgrow their cuteness ... Elegance, grace, delicacy, beauty, and a lack of self-consciousness: a creature who knows he is cute soon isn't.
There is nothing more provocative than minding your own business.
Gentle reader, the Fountain of Youth is radioactive, and those who imbibe its poisonous heavy waters will suffer the hideous fate of decaying metal. Yet almost without exception, the wretched idiot inhabitants of our benighted planet would gulp down this radioactive excrement if it were offered.
Language is a virus from outer space.
One very important aspect of art is that it makes people aware of what they know and donβt know they know... Once the breakthrough is made, there is a permanent expansion of awareness. But there is always a reaction of rage, of outrage, at the first breakthrough... So the artist, then, expands awareness. And once the breakthrough is made, this becomes part of the general awareness.
Freedom for supporters of the government only, for members of one party only no matter how big its membership may be is no freedom at all. Freedom is always freedom for the man who thinks differently.
I figure anytime you put an adjective before 'writer,' it's a way of dismissing the writer.
He thought that the rose was to be found in its own eternity and not in his words; and that we may mention or allude to a thing, but not express it.
This, in fact, is the power of the imagination, which, combining the memory of gold with that of the mountain, can compose the idea of a golden mountain.
When you look at the sun during your walking meditation, the mindfulness of the body helps you to see that the sun is in you; without the sun there is no life at all and suddenly you get in touch with the sun in a different way.
The more complex the network is, the more complex its pattern of interconnections, the more resilient it will be.
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