William S. Burroughs Quotes
-
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.
-
Wouldn't it be great,as Scott Peck suggests, if all medical students had to undergo the symptoms and feeling of a spectrum of illnesses. From acute infections to terminal cancer - and Kuru, the laughing sickness. Just a month for each exposure, controlled of course, and a good heavy dose of excruciating pain. So they'll know what that feels like.
-
The way to kill a man or a nation is to cut off his dreams, the way the whites are taking care of the Indians: killing their dreams, their magic, their familiar spirits.
-
I like the idea of generalizing the narcotic thing by making it black meat addiction.
-
All political movements are basically anti-creative - since a political movement is a form of war.
-
This is a war universe. War all the time. There may be other universes, but ours seems to be based on war and games.
-
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.
-
If you weren't surprised by your life you wouldn't be alive. Life is surprise.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Dennis Cooper, God help him, is a born writer.
-
In deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality.
-
If, after spending time with a person, you feel as though you've lost a quart of plasma, avoid that person in the future.
-
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.
-
Many of my characters first came through to me as voices. That's why I use a tape recorder.
-
Political conflicts are merely surface manifestations. If conflicts arise you may be sure that certain powers intend to keep this conflict under operation since they hope to profit from the situation.
-
He who has learned to do nothing with his whole mind and body will have everything done for him.
-
[Arab peoples] are stuck back thousands of years and they think they're going to get out with a TV set.
-
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?
-
There's a book called Mummy and the people actually seem to have become addicted to mummy dust. And mummy dust was somehow made from people who've died of the most loathsome diseases. It's too bad that [David] Cronenberg didn't see this book, see I only saw it after the film was made. It might have been of interest to him.
-
The American uppermiddle-class citizen is a composite of negatives. He is largely delineated by what he is not.
-
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.
-
I detest limitations of any kind, and intend to establish my ass some place where I am a virgin on the police blotter.