William S. Burroughs Quotes
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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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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 had not taken a bath in a year nor changed my clothes or removed them except to stick a needle every hour in the fibrous grey wooden flesh of heroin addiction. I did absolutely nothing.
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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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Revolution in America begins in books and music, then waits for political operatives to 'implement changes after the fact.'
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I began to get a feeling familiar to me from my bartending days of being the only sane man in a nuthouse. It doesn't make you feel superior but depressed and scared, because there is nobody you can contact.
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Bizarre and engrossingly disturbing, Naked Lunch, finds truth in madness.
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I am not a person and I am not an animal. There is something I am here for something I must do before I can go.
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Junk takes everything and gives nothing but insurance against junk sickness.
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Our national drug is alcohol. We tend to regard the use of any other drug with special horror.
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He asked if i wouldn't like to live completely without problems, say in greece maybe, nice climate, everything provided? i say: "when we find out what we are actually doing and who we actually are, that is the point of living...it may be only a few seconds...a few seconds of significant actions, out of a lifetime.
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In the event of atomic war there is a tremendous biological advantage in the so-called undeveloped areas that have a high birth rate and high death rate because, man, they can plow under those mutations.
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For years I wondered why dreams are so often dull when related, and this morning I find the answer, which is very simple - like most answers, you have always known it: No context ... like a stuffed animal set on the floor of a bank.
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His whole being radiates a pure, wild sweetness, flitting through night woods with little melodious cries, on some cryptic errand. There is also an aura of doom and sadness about this trusting little creature. He has been abandoned many times over the centuries, left to die in cold city alleys, in hot noon vacant lots, pottery shards, nettles, crumbled mud walls. Many times he has cried for help in vain.
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Whatever happened to God's justice? I am convinced that God exist and God is one asshole.
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Build a good name. Keep your name clean. Don't make compromises. Don't worry about making a bunch of money or being successful. Be concerned with doing good work and make the right choices and protect your work. And if you can build a good name, eventually, that name will be its own currency.
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A doctor is not criticized for describing the manifestations and symptoms of an illness, even though the symptoms may be disgusting. I feel that a writer has the right to the same freedom In fact, I think that the time has come for the line between literature and science, a purely arbitrary line, to be erased.
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Man must get away from verbal forms to attain the consciousness, that which is there to be perceived at hand.
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If everyone is to be made responsible for everything they do, you must extend responsibility beyond the level of conscious intention.
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I like the shaman very much, the way he was crying.
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How far would people get in physics if discovery was described as disgusting - "Your formula is disgusting and filthy"? Not very far.
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For God's sake, keep your eyes open. Notice what's going on around you.
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Writing prejudicial, off-putting reviews is a precise exercise in applied black magic. The reviewer can draw free-floating disagreeable associations to a book by implying that the book is completely unimportant without saying exactly why, and carefully avoiding any clear images that could capture the reader's full attention.