“Intense sexual desire is the greatest thing in the
world. Janey dreams of cocks. Janey dreams of cocks instead of
objects. Janey has to fuck. This is the way sex drives Janey crazy.
Before Janey fucks, she keeps her wants in cells. As soon as Janey is
fucking, she wants to be adored as much as possible, at the same
time as its other extreme: ignored as much as possible. More than
this: Janey can no longer perceive herself wanting: Janey is want.”
(Kathy Acker in ihrem Roman “Harte Mädchen weinen nicht”
(Orginaltitel: Blood and Guts in High School”), 1978)
He lifted me upward, up above his head, fingers in both cunt and
asshole so now I was his vase, he the thorns, and throwing the vase
over his shoulder so that it broke on the floor, continued to bring me
to orgasm again, fingers moved in labyrinths of violence. Always
this is how I am captured.
(Kathy Acker in ihrem Roman “My Mother: A Demenology”, 1993)
Polonius: You`re running out to see that Hamlet, aren`t
you? You two have something going on with you.
I`m not going to let you go! I`m going to protect you!
He doesn`t protect you, Pheelie: no man respects you
except for me; I give you a home and everything you
want. He`s going to leave you.
Ophelia: Why don`t you fuck your wife, instead of me?
Polonius: Phelia! Where did you learn such foul language!
I`m going to wash your mouth out with soap, young lady.
Kathy Acker in ihrem Roman “Mein Tod, mein Leben - Die Geschichte der
Pier Paolo Pasolini“ (Orginaltitel “My Death and Life by Passolini”, 1984)
“Women need to become
literary “criminals”, break
the literary laws and
reinvent their own, because
the established laws prevent
women from presenting
the reality of their lives.”
Kathy Acker in: “Bodies Of Work”
“The only model I found in my
world was William Burroughs. (...)
He was dealing with how politics
and language come together.”
(Kathy Acker in einem Interview, 1992)
Janey: For 2,000 years, you´ve had the nerve to tell
women who we are. We use your words; we eat your food.
Every way we get money has to be a crime. We are plagiarists,
liars and criminals.
Kathy Acker in ihrem Roman “Harte Mädchen weinen nicht”.
(Orginaltitel: “Blood and Guts in High School”, 1978)

We come crawling through these cracks, orphans, lobotomies;
if you ask me what I want, I´ll tell you.
I want everything.
Whole rotten world come down and break.
Let me spread my legs.
(Kathy Acker in ihrem Roman: Pussy King of the Pirates, 1996)

“Acker is quickly becoming the hottest, most passionate,
sassy, experimental, daring darling of fiction on
both sides of the Atlantic since Genet.“
(Zitat aus der Zeitschrift Metro News)

“Don Quixote decided that the only thing´s to be happy. Since the
sole reason she ever went out of her house was to fuck, she decided
that to be happy´s to fuck.
She was riding her horse along, in order to find sex that wouldn´t
hurt too much. At this point she saw three or four hundred men.
“My God”, she said, “how full of air they are!” She turned to her
dog. “Fortune is guiding our affairs beyond our most hopeful
expectations. Here´re those giants I´ve been looking for.”
“Don Quixote“, Grove Press, NYC 1986

“You create identity,
you´re not given identity per se.
What became more and more
interesting to me wasn´t the “I”, it was
text because it´s text that create identity.
That´s how I got interested in plagiarism.”
(Kathy Acker in einem Interview
mit Sylvére Lothringer, New York 1991)

“At a certain point I realized that the “I” doesn´t exist.
So I said to myself: If the “I” doesn´t exist, I have to
construct one, or maybe even more than one.”
(Kathy Acker in einem Interview mit Sylvere Lothringer,
New York 1991)

“I am as closed-up and fucked-up as everybody else.
I am hell. The world is hell.
“No, it isn´t”, I scream, but I know it is.
Hell. Hell. Hell. Hell. Help. Help me. Help me. Love me.“
Kathy Acker in ihrem Roman “Harte Mädchen weinen nicht”
(Orginaltitel: Blood and Guts in High School”, 1978)

“When I walked out of the surgeon´s office and didn´t know where to
go, I asked myself what I could know. Did I have anything in myself,
in my life, that could help me know, and so, deal with cancer?
Answer: (...) my work, my writing.(...) Imagination and will.”
(Kathy Acker, The Gift of Disease, 1996)
“Harte Mädchen weinen nicht” Exposé für einen
Dokumentarfilmüber Kathy Acker

“Abortions are the symbol, the outer image, of sexual
relations in this world. Describing my abortions is the only
real way I can tell you about pain and fear. (...) My unstoppable
drive for sexual love made me know.”
Kathy Acker in ihrem Roman “Harte Mädchen weinen nicht”
(Orginaltitel: Blood and Guts in High School”, 1978)
“I feel extremely
lonely and sad.
I´m used to being by myself most
of the time and having my
own space in time.”
(Kathy Acker in einer selbstaufgenommenen
Videoaufzeichnung aus dem Jahr 1977)
“The hardest part of my cancer was the walking away from
that surgeon and from conventional medicine. Belief in conventional
medicine, in what our doctors tell us is so deeply
engrained in our society that to walk away from conventional
medicine is to walk away from normal society.“
(Kathy Acker, The Gift of Disease, 1996)
My nutritionist read my
pathology report and said,
“There’s only one way
you can beat your cancer.”
“What’s that?“
“You have to find
out what caused it.”
(Kathy Acker, The Gift of Disease, 1996)
“I had been confused why I had gotten cancer. Three weeks later,
I saw the network of causation so clearly I wondered why I
wasn’t more disease-riddled. My healer reminded me that
if health is based on forgiveness, then I had to forgive ...
(Kathy Acker, The Gift of Disease, 1996)
“I feel I exist in a lineage – the poète maudite lineage –
that (...) began with Rimbaud. It´s writers who posit
themselves as being against the
ongoing society and culture.”
(Kathy Acker in einem Interview.)
Even a woman who has the soul of a pirate,
at least pirate morals, even a woman who
(...) has constraints to heterosexual marriage,
even a woman who is a freak in our society
needs a home.The only characteristic freaks
share is our knowledge that we don´t fit in
“Don Quixote“, Grove Press, NYC 1986
“It´s high time we talked about female sexuality, what the
female body is, images of female sexuality,
what women really desire. For years women have not been
allowed to explore what their self-images are, what could be
possible self-images, or what images of desire are. These
issues are fascinating to me!”
(Kathy Acker in einem Interview)
It´s all up to you, girls. You have to be strong.
These are the days of post-women´s liberation.
You have grown up by now and
you have to take care of yourself.
No one´s going to help you.
“Don Quixote“, Grove Press, NYC 1986
Teach me how to talk to you.WANT.
Is my wanting you so bad,
wanting your cock so bad,
wanting the feel of your lips on my lips
just me being selfish and egoistic?
Teach me a new language.
Kathy Acker in ihrem Roman “Harte Mädchen weinen nicht“
(Orginaltitel: “Blood and Guts in High School“, 1978)
Acker gives her work
the power to mirror
the reader´s soul”
(William S. Burroughs)

Your man ain´t anything. Jonny says that if I don´t
work my ass off, for him, he´s not going to let me
back in the house.
I have to earn two hundred before I can go back.
Two hundred? That ain´t shit!
My baby is the toughest there is.
Well, shit girl, if I don´t come back with eight hundred
I get my ass whupped off.
“New York City in 1979: The Whores in Jail at Night”

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