Burroughs William Quotes & Sayings

It is thought that the virus is a degeneration from a more complex life form. It may at one time have been capable of independent life. Now has fallen to the borderline between living and dead matter. It can exhibit living qualities only in a host, by using the life of another-the renunciation of life itself, a falling towards inorganic, inflexible machine, towards dead matter — William S. Burroughs

Never interfere in a girl and boy fight. — William S. Burroughs

Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs were all my teachers, each one passing through the lobby of the Chelsea Hotel, my new university. — Patti Smith

A consumer society is about simplfying and degrading the consumer as well as the product. — William S. Burroughs

We will endeavor to halt the Industrial Revolution before it is too late, to regulate population at a reasonable point, to eventually replace quantitative money with qualitative money, to decentralize, to conserve resources. The Industrial Revolution is primarily a virus revolution, dedicated to controlled proliferation of identical objects and persons. You are making soap, you don't give a shit who buys your soap, the more the soapier. And you don't give a shit who makes it, who works in your factories. Just so they make soap. — William S. Burroughs

Too perfect to be sexually attractive. — William S. Burroughs

Shoot the bitch and write a book. That's what I did. — William S. Burroughs

Here I sit with my three old cats, getting closer to eternity all the time, on a twine chair - (Van Gogh) and me too - and it gets very depressing. What can I do? I had high hopes. We all did. Remember just outside the Tangier Consulate: "Have you met the Skipper yet?" Later I did. And now no skipping, no transport anywhere, except to a cut-rate mortuary. Where were you when I wasn't there? "Hound of Hell!!" screamed the Pop Star, and kicked the fink dog in the nuts. "Only decent thing I done." "Forget the whole thing. I have." Great gasp at this point. How much time? have I left? Not much it seems. — William S. Burroughs

Hollis thought he looked like William Burroughs, minus the bohemian substrate (or perhaps the methadone). Like someone who'd be invited quail shooting with the vice-president, though too careful to get himself shot. — William Gibson

I like the shaman very much, the way he was crying. — William S. Burroughs

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 ... — William S. Burroughs

He was a sad poison nice guy more poison than nice. — William S. Burroughs

So he is putting down junk and coming on with tea. I take three drags, Jane looked at him and her flesh crystallized. I leaped up screaming "I got the fear!" and ran out of the house. Drank a beer in a little restaurant - mosaic bar and soccer scores and bullfight posters - and waited for the bus to town.

A year later in Tangier I heard she was dead. — William S. Burroughs

In my early teens, I heard about Naked Lunch and its mutating typewriters and talking cockroaches. While I would hardly classify its dystopic vision as erotica now, at the time, Naked Lunch was my first foray into consuming smut. It was because of Burroughs that I knew about the particular musk that blooms when a rectum is penetrated, and that death-by-hanging produces spontaneous trouser tents. The first Burroughs I read was Naked Lunch, but I buried myself in a few of his stories, and thus the arc of my recollection is just as non-linear as his narrative. — Peter Dube

Sodomy is as old as the human species. — William S. Burroughs

I was his "little girl with the William Burroughs mind," his "secret fairy," "female Frank Zappa" and "window onto a magical world." He said I fell to earth, leaving wing-marks on the ceilings of our dreams. — Jalina Mhyana

Last night I woke up with someone squeezing my hand. It was my other hand. — William S. Burroughs

You were given the power to love in order to use it, no matter what pain it may cause you. — William S. Burroughs

Kerouac opened a million coffee bars and sold a million pairs of Levis to both sexes. Woodstock rises from his pages. — William S. Burroughs

Who was I? The stranger was footsteps in the snow a long time ago. — William S. Burroughs

The simplest questions are the most difficult. — William S. Burroughs

Some people like neat suburbs. I always am attracted to the rundown and the old and the offbeat. — William S. Burroughs

It is to be remembered that the origin of all the arts-music, painting and writing-is magical and evocative; and that magic is always used to obtain some definite result. — William S. Burroughs

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. — William S. Burroughs

I've seen villages in South America with no police whatever. Then the cops would arrive, then the sanitary inspectors, and before you know it they've got all the problems - crime, juvenile delinquency, the whole works - just like us. — William S. Burroughs

I don't spot junk neighbourhoods by the way they look, but by the feel, somewhat the same process by which a dowser locates hidden water. I am walking along and suddenly the junk in my cells moves and twitches like the dowsers wand: 'Junk here! — William S. Burroughs

How I hate those who are dedicated to producing conformity. — William S. Burroughs

Any unchecked impulse does, within the human body and psyche, lead to the destruction of the organism. — William S. Burroughs

We must all face the fact that our leaders are certifiably insane or worse — William S. Burroughs

The price an artist pays for doing what he wants is that he has to do it. — William S. Burroughs

As an old junk pusher told me, 'Watch whose money you pick up.' — William S. Burroughs

In this world, [of Flash and Filigree] nothing is true, and censure or outrage is simply irrelevant. — William S. Burroughs

England has the most sordid literary scene I've ever seen. They all meet in the same pub. This guy's writing a foreword for this person. They all have to give radio programs, they have to do all this just in order to scrape by. They're all scratching each other's backs. — William S. Burroughs

Man must get away from verbal forms to attain the consciousness, that which is there to be perceived at hand. — William S. Burroughs

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 ... — William S. Burroughs

I certainly wouldn't advocate anyone using drugs on a regular or habitual basis. — William S. Burroughs

Kick is seeing things from a special angle. Kick is momentary freedom from the claims of the aging, cautious, nagging, fightened flesh. — William S. Burroughs

Cowboy: New York hood talk means kill the mother fucker wherever you find him. A rat is a rat is a rat is a rat. Is an informer. — William S. Burroughs

Now Christianity sounded good at first to the naive convert. Love, peace and charity -
what's wrong with that? I'll tell you what's wrong - a series of unprecedented
horrors perpetrated by so-called Christians: The Inquisition, the Conquistadores,
the American Indian wars, slavery, Hiroshima and the present-day Bible Belt. — William S. Burroughs

The purpose of my writing is to expose and arrest Nova Criminals. — William S. Burroughs

Consider the impasse of a one God universe.
He is all-knowing and all-powerful.
He can't go anywhere since He is already everywhere.
He can't do anything since the act of doing presupposes opposition.
His universe is irrevocably thermodynamic having no friction by definition. So, He has to create friction: War, Fear, Sickness, Death,
To keep his dying show on the road. — William S. Burroughs

Madness is confusion of levels of fact ... Madness is not seeing visions but confusing levels. — William S. Burroughs

Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing. — William S. Burroughs

You're both mother fuckers. She was half asleep. Her voice was matter-of-fact as if referring to actual incest. — William S. Burroughs

Death was in every sell of his body. He gave off a faint, greenish steam of decay. Lee imagined he would glow in the dark. — William S. Burroughs

So many people in the Western World are just automatically made ill by any sort of frank writing about sexual matters. — William S. Burroughs

I wasn't exposed to art as I was growing up, and can't recall the first time I saw a work of art. However, I remember very clearly a vision I had of a little green reindeer when I was a child, and visions emanate from the same mythical area where painting resides. Whatever the reason, I immediately felt comfortable working with visual materials. — William S. Burroughs

Communication must become total and conscious before we can stop it. — William S. Burroughs

Language is a virus from outer space — William S. Burroughs

Sexual arousal results from the repetition and impact of image. — William S. Burroughs

I think Judge Learned Hand was a cultured, intelligent man. — William S. Burroughs

One morning in April, I woke up a little sick. I lay there looking at shadows on the white plaster ceiling. I remembered a long time ago, when I lay in bed beside my mother, watching lights from the street move across the ceiling and down the walls. I felt the sharp nostalgia of train whistles, piano music down a city street, burning leaves. A mild degree of junk sickness always brought me the magic of childhood. It never fails, I thought, just like a shot; I wonder if all junkies score for this wonderful stuff. — William S. Burroughs

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. — William S. Burroughs

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. — William S. Burroughs

I knew [Timothy] Leary, but barely knew, didn't really know Jan [Kerouac]. — William S. Burroughs

I tried more than once to tell you, to communicate what I know. You did not or could not listen. You can not show to anyone what he has not seen. — William S. Burroughs

I knew William Burroughs really well, and I was always star struck being around him. I adored him. — Patti Smith

Smash the control images. Smash the control machine. — William S. Burroughs

I read a lot of books for information, like doctor books, spy books ... — William S. Burroughs

What does the money machine eat? It eats youth, spontaneity, life, beauty, and, above all, it eats creativity. It eats quality and sh*ts quantity. — William S. Burroughs

Man is a political animal' said Aristotle telling one of the greatest lies in human history. For every man has more in common with the hills and with the stars than with other men. — William S. Burroughs

A chaotic situation is always deliberately produced. Ask yourself who or what sort of creature could benefit from such a situation. — William S. Burroughs

Death needs time for what it kills to grow in. — William S. Burroughs

Americans have a special horror of giving up control, of letting things happen in their own way without interference. — William S. Burroughs

The whole point is, I feel the machine should be eliminated. Now that it has served its purpose of alerting us to the dangers of machine control. — William S. Burroughs

Most people don't notice what's going on around them. That's my principal message to writers: for God's sake, keep your eyes open. — William S. Burroughs

People have nothing to say, but they are afraid of saying nothing, so what they do say comes out flat and vapid and meaningless. The shadow of death is on every face. — William S. Burroughs

What I've learned to do when I sit down to work on a shitty first draft is to quiet the voices in my head. First there's the vinegar-lipped Reader Lady, who says primly, "Well, that's not very interesting, is it?" And there's the emaciated German male who writes these Orwellian memos detailing your thought crimes. And there are your parents, agonizing over your lack of loyalty and discretion; and there's William Burroughs, dozing off or shooting up because he finds you as bold and articulate as a houseplant; and so on. And there are also the dogs: let's not forget the dogs, the dogs in their pen who will surely hurtle and snarl their way out if you ever stop writing, because writing is, for some of us, the latch that keeps the door of the pen closed, keeps those crazy ravenous dogs contained. — Anne Lamott

My characters are quite as real to me as so-called real people; which is one reason why I'm not subject to what is known as loneliness. I have plenty of company. — William S. Burroughs

A.J. is an agent like me, but for whom or for what no one has been able to discover. It is rumored that he represents a trust of giant insects from another galaxy ... — William S. Burroughs

Some of us are sixty feet long with a brain the size of a walnut. — William S. Burroughs

Melancholy Baby dies from an overdose of time — William S. Burroughs

Authors and artists are still afraid of breaking away as far as [William Burroughs] did ... And he did it in the 50s! — Yony Leyser

Humility is indeed beatness, a compulsory virtue that no one exhibits unless he has to. — William S. Burroughs

I meant that people will take anything that gives them a lift, whether it's alcohol or cocaine or the consciousness-expanding drugs or opiates. In Iran, until recently, they sold opium in shops legally, and they had 3,000,000 addicts in a population of 15,000,000. I don't believe that all those people were escaping from "complexes" or anything of the sort. They were simply exposed to it. — William S. Burroughs

Black magic operates most effectively in preconscious, marginal areas. Casual curses are the most effective. — William S. Burroughs

Criminal law is one of the few professions where the client buys someone else's luck. The luck of most people is strictly non-transferrable. But a good criminal lawyer can sell all his luck to a client, and the more luck he sells the more he has to sell. — William S. Burroughs

The junk merchant doesn't sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to his product. He does not improve and simplify his merchandise. He degrades and simplifies the client. — William S. Burroughs

Perhaps all pleasure in only relief — William S. Burroughs

I prefer cats to people, for the most part. Most people aren't cute,
& if they are cute they rapidly outgrow it — William S. Burroughs

Brummel would rush upon his plate & gulp down a roast in such a revolting manner that the other guests complained they were nauseated and Brummel had to be fed in his room ... ... ... . — William S. Burroughs

Junk is the ideal product ... the ultimate merchandise. No sales talk necessary. The client will crawl through a sewer and beg to buy. — William S. Burroughs

That old feeling is still in my leaking heart. — William S. Burroughs

Life is a cutup. And to pretend that you write or paint in a timeless vacuum is just simply ... not ... true, not in accord with the facts of human perception. — William S. Burroughs

If I knew how much you loved me, I would've shot you sooner. — William S. Burroughs

The rudeness of many Americans depressed him, a rudeness based on a solid ignorance of the whole concept of manners, and on the proposition that for social purposes, all people are more or less equal and interchangeable. — William S. Burroughs

Sit down on your ass, or what's left of it after four years in the navy. — William S. Burroughs

Gentle reader, the Fountain of Youth is radioactive, and those who imbibe its poisonous heavy waters will suffer the hideous fate of decaying metal. Yet almost without exception, the wretched idiot inhabitants of our benighted planet would gulp down this radioactive excrement if it were offered. — William S. Burroughs

Unquestionably, this drug is is very useful to the artist, activating trains of association that would otherwise be inaccessible, and I owe many of the scenes in Naked Lunch directly to the use of cannabis. — William Burroughs

One very important aspect of art is that it makes people aware of what they know and don't know they know ... Once the breakthrough is made, there is a permanent expansion of awareness. But there is always a reaction of rage, of outrage, at the first breakthrough ... So the artist, then, expands awareness. And once the breakthrough is made, this becomes part of the general awareness. — William S. Burroughs

It was Christmas Day and Danny the Car Wiper hit the street junksick and broke after seventy-two hours in the precinct jail. It was a clear bright day, but there was warmth in the sun. Danny shivered with an inner cold. He turned up the collar of his worn, greasy black overcoat.
This beat benny wouldn't pawn for a deuce, he thought. — William S. Burroughs

Everything Jack says is to be taken with considerable reserve. — William S. Burroughs

Now all politicians assume a necessity of control, the more efficient the control the better. — William S. Burroughs

By the flaws in the picture the truth will emerge. — William S. Burroughs

A room full of fags gives me the horrors. They jerk around like puppets on invisible strings, galvanized into hideous activity that is the negation of everything living and spontaneous. The live human being has moved out of these bodies long ago. But something moved in when the original tenant moved out. — William S. Burroughs

When I become death. Death is the seed from which I grow. — William S. Burroughs

Once the law starts asking questions, there's no stopping them. — William S. Burroughs

All you cat lovers, remember all the millions of cats mewling through the world's rooms lay all their hopes and trust in you. — William S. Burroughs

No one is ever really alone. You are part of everything alive. — William S. Burroughs

He kisses the D.S.'s hand thrusting his fingers into his mouth (the D.S. must feel his toothless gums) complaining he has lost teeth "inna thervith". "Please Boss Man. I'll wipe your ass, I'll wash out your dirty condoms, I'll polish your shoes with the oil on my nose ... — William S. Burroughs