William S. Burroughs Quotes
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If, after spending time with a person, you feel as though you've lost a quart of plasma, avoid that person in the future.
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To be an outlaw you must first have a base in law to reject and get out of, I never had such a base. I never had a place I could call home that meant any more than a key to a house, apartment or hotel room. ... Am I alien? Alien from what exactly? Perhaps my home is my dream city, more real than my waking life precisely because it has no relation to waking life.
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The American uppermiddle-class citizen is a composite of negatives. He is largely delineated by what he is not.
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In deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality.
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Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing.
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This is a war universe. War all the time. There may be other universes, but ours seems to be based on war and games.
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I read Mailer's Ancient Evenings with great interest because I was interested in . . . the seven souls structure, which was very helpful to me in Western Lands. And also in Place of Dead Roads. So that's Mailer.
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[Arab peoples] are stuck back thousands of years and they think they're going to get out with a TV set.
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I am trying like Klee, to create something that will have a life of its own, that can put me in real danger, a danger which I willingly take on myself.
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All political movements are basically anti-creative - since a political movement is a form of war.
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Dennis Cooper, God help him, is a born writer.
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If all individuals were conditioned to machine efficiency in the performance of their duties there would have to be at least one person outside the machine to give the necessary orders; if the machine absorbed or eliminated all those outside the machine, the machine will slow down and stop forever.
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You do an awful lot of bad writing in order to do any good writing. Incredibly bad. I think it would be very interesting to make a collection of some of the worst writing by good writers.
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A functioning police state needs no police.
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I like the idea of generalizing the narcotic thing by making it black meat addiction.
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I see no reason why the artistic world can't absolutely merge with Madison Avenue. Pop art is a move in that direction. Why can't we have advertisements with beautiful words and beautiful images?
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If after having been exposed to someone's presence you feel as if you've lost a quart of plasma, avoid that presence. You need it like you need pernicious anemia.
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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.
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I started to write in about 1950; I was thirty-five at the time; there didn't seem to be any strong motivation. I simply was endeavoring to put down in a more or less straightforward journalistic style something about my experiences with addiction and addicts.
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If you weren't surprised by your life you wouldn't be alive. Life is surprise.
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I detest limitations of any kind, and intend to establish my ass some place where I am a virgin on the police blotter.
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Bizarre and engrossingly disturbing, Naked Lunch, finds truth in madness.
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Always remember, there's no point trying to be faithful to the book because film and writing are just two completely different things. Any film stands on its own, apart from whether it's based on a novel.
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If the mortality rate seems high we must realize that Nature is a ruthless teacher. There are no second chances in Mother Nature's Survival Course.