#motivations

The question is frequently asked: Why does a man become a drug addict? The answer is that he usually does not intend to become an addict. You don’t wake up one morning and decide to be a drug addict. It takes at least three months’ shooting twice a day to get any habit at all. And you don’t really know what junk sickness is until you have had several habits. It took me almost six months to get my first habit, and then the withdrawal symptoms were mild. I think it no exaggeration to say it takes about a year and several hundred injections to make an addict. The questions, of course, could be asked: Why did you ever try narcotics? Why did you continue using it long enough to become an addict? You become a narcotics addict because you do not have strong motivations in the other direction. Junk wins by default. I tried it as a matter of curiosity. I drifted along taking shots when I could score. I ended up hooked. Most addicts I have talked to report a similar experience. They did not start using drugs for any reason they can remember. They just drifted along until they got hooked. If you have never been addicted, you can have no clear idea what it means to need junk with the addict’s special need. You don’t decide to be an addict. One morning you wake up sick and you’re an addict. (Junky, Prologue, p. xxxviii) ↗

— William S. Burroughs

#addicts #drug-addiction #junk #junkie #motivations

If you wish to draw profit, read with humility, simplicity, and faith, and never with the design of gaining a reputation for learning. ↗

— Thomas à Kempis

#reading #scripture #faith

Motivations are too tangled and complex. ↗

— Russell Banks

#motivations #tangled #too

It's a complex relationship when your dad happened to be president and you are president and then you have all the amateur psychology that goes on when people try to speculate about motivations. ↗

— Jeb Bush

#amateur #complex #dad #goes #happened

Whatever their motivations, lawmakers on both side of the aisle have certainly discovered that immigration is one of those issues that resonate strongly with the public. ↗

— Gwen Ifill

#both #certainly #discovered #immigration #issues

My motivations are thinking I can write better songs, that the concerts can be better. ↗

— Enrique Iglesias

#concerts #i #i can #motivations #songs

One of the primary motivations for the series is that I never really felt that I was a person who could explain verbally what I thought all that well. ↗

— Lev Yilmaz

#explain #felt #i #motivations #never

I explain this not for publicity, nor seeking to win an argument of right or wrong, I explain so that the record is clear as to my thinking and motivations in bombing a government installation. ↗

— Timothy McVeigh

#bombing #clear #explain #government #i

The second draft is on yellow paper, that's when I work on characterizations. The third is pink, I work on story motivations. Then blue, that's where I cut, cut, cut. ↗

— Jacqueline Susann

#cut #draft #i #motivations #paper

Proposals to forbid golf courses have about the same motivations as proposals to forbid skate boarding, although the rationalizations are different. ↗

— John McCarthy

#although #boarding #courses #different #forbid