William S. Burroughs Quotes
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In deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality. It is as final as the mountains: a fact. There it is. When you realize it you cannot complain.
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A junky runs on junk time. When the junk is cut off, the clock runs down and stops. All he can do is hang on and wait for non-junky time to start. A sick junky has no escape from external time, no place to go. He can only wait.
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No atomic physicist has to worry, people will always want to kill other people on a mass scale. Sure, he's got the fridge full of sausages and spring water.
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Like Spain, I am bound to the past.
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Never interfere in a girl and boy fight.
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When you stop growing you start dying.
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when I become death. Death is the seed from which I grow.
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Most serious writers refuse to make themselves available to the things that technology is doing. I've never been able to understand this sort of fear.
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I escaped the [Southern-writer] label because I didn't and don't write about the South.
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Society is cancerous and bureaucracy is its cancer.
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I bear my burden proudly for all to see, to conquer prejudice and ignorance and hate with knowledge and sincerity and love. Whenever you are threatened by a hostile presence, you emit a thick cloud of love like an octopus squirts out ink.
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Most people don't see what's going on around them. That's my principal message to writers: 'For God's sake, keep your eyes open. Notice what's going on around you.'
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Cheat your landlord if you can -- and must -- but do not try to shortchange the Muse.
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I read a lot of books for information, like doctor books, spy books. . . .
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in the magical universe there are no coincidences and there are no accidents. nothing happens unless someone wills it to happen
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How I hate those who are dedicated to producing conformity.
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Perhaps all pleasure is only relief.
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We should exterminate all rational thought.
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Modern man has lost the option of silence.
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Hemingway was a prisoner of his style. No one can talk like the characters in Hemingway except the characters in Hemingway. His style in the wildest sense finally killed him.
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In my writing I am acting as a map maker, an explorer of psychic areas, a cosmonaut of inner space, and I see no point in exploring areas that have already been thoroughly surveyed.
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Most all methods of capitol punishment are designed to inflict the maximum of humiliation - not attempts to prevent suicide.
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He [Samuel Beckett] is great, a very great writer. Any modern writer is bound to be influenced by [James] Joyce. Of course, by Beckett as well.
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In this world, [of Flash and Filigree] nothing is true, and censure or outrage is simply irrelevant.