William Burroughs Quotes: top 100 famous quotes about William Burroughs

William Burroughs Quotes & Sayings

Happy to read and share the best inspirational William Burroughs quotes, sayings and quotations on Wise Famous Quotes.

The Composite City where all human potentials are spread out in a vast silent market. — William S. Burroughs

I'm creating an imaginary - it's always imaginary - world in which I would like to live. — William S. Burroughs

There is in fact something obscene and sinister about photography, a desire to imprison, to incorporate, a sexual intensity of pursuit. — William S. Burroughs

My relationships with my cats has saved me from a deadly, pervasive ignorance. — William S. Burroughs

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

We can translate word and letter into color - [Arthur] Rimbaud stated that in his color vowels, words quote "words" can be read in silent color. — William S. Burroughs

The word has not been recognized as a virus because it has achieved a state of stable symbiosis with the host. — 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

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

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

It is indeed difficult to make a living as a writer, and my advice to anyone contemplating a literary career is to have some other trade. — William S. Burroughs

The boys eat happily looking into each other's eyes. Blood runs down their chins. — William S. Burroughs

The self is like a pimping blackmailing chauffeur who gets you from here to there on word lines. — William S. Burroughs

Dream long enough and dream hard enough
you will come to know
dreaming can make it so ... — William S. Burroughs

When you stop growing you start dying. — William S. Burroughs

There is no line between the 'real world' and 'world of myth and symbol.' Objects, sensations, hit with the impact of hallucination. — William S. Burroughs

two Lesbian Agents with glazed faces of grafted penis flesh sat sipping spinal fluid through alabaster straws — William S. Burroughs

Is Control controlled by its need to control? Answer: yes. — William S. Burroughs

If, after spending time with a person, you feel as though you've lost a quart of plasma, avoid that person in the future. — William S. Burroughs

The beautiful disease and The government falls along the weed rooms flesh along the weed government ... — William S. Burroughs

Ever notice how many expressions carry over from queers to con men? Like 'raise,' letting someone know you are in the same line? — William S. Burroughs

I can feel the heat closing in, feel them out there making their moves. — 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

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

You see, control can never be a means to any practical end ... It can never be a means to anything but more control ... like junk.. — William S. Burroughs

The dream is a spontaneous happening and therefore dangerous to a control system set-up by the non-dreamers — William S. Burroughs

The only possible ethic is to do what one wants to do. — William S. Burroughs

When people start talking about their bowel movements, they are inexorable as the processes of which they speak. — William S. Burroughs

Thou shalt not be such a shit, you don't know you are one. — William S. Burroughs

Intelligence and war are games, perhaps the only meaningful games left. If any player becomes too proficient, the game is threatened with termination. — William S. Burroughs

already, and the fuzz walks in on some newlyweds from Sioux Falls. — William S. Burroughs

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

A coprophage calls for a plate, shits on it and eats the shit, exclaiming, Mmmm, that's my rich substance. — William S. Burroughs

Danger is a biologic necessity, like dreams. if you face death, for that time, for the period of
direct confrontation, you are immortal. — William S. Burroughs

The best way to keep something bad from happening is to see it ahead of time ... and you can't see it if you refuse to face the possibility. — William S. Burroughs

O death where is thy sting? The man is never on time ... — William S. Burroughs

After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say 'I want to see the manager. — William S. Burroughs

Whatever happened to God's justice? I am convinced that God exist and God is one asshole. — William S. Burroughs

Virtue is simply happiness, and happiness is a by-product of function. You are happy when you are functioning. — William S. Burroughs

I see painting as an evocative magic, and there must always be a random factor in magic, one which must be constantly changed and renewed. — William S. Burroughs

As soon as you have a problem, it's insoluble. These things should never have been allowed to happen. — William S. Burroughs

All writing is in fact cut-ups. A collage of words read heard overheard. What else? — 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

He who has learned to do nothing with his whole mind and body will have everything done for him. — 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

Why are we here? We're here to go! — William S. Burroughs

Successful control means achieving a balance and avoiding a showdown where all-out force would be necessary. — William S. Burroughs

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

If you weren't surprised by your life you wouldn't be alive. Life is surprise. — William S. Burroughs

How did we all get here? Spot of trouble in our old countries. — William S. Burroughs

Anything that can be accomplished chemically can be accomplished in other ways. — William S. Burroughs

Danger is a very rare commodity in these times, monopolized by intelligence agencies and stuntmen. — William S. Burroughs

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

Thinking is not enough. There is no final enough of wisdom, experience - any ... thing. — William S. Burroughs

Addiction is a disease of exposure. Doctors and nurses, for instance, have a high addiction rate. — William S. Burroughs

I'm an old-fashioned person, and I don't like informers. — William S. Burroughs

His face with lined with suffering in which his eyes did not participate. — William S. Burroughs

We are setting out to create new worlds, new beings, new modes of consciousness. — William S. Burroughs

Happiness is a byproduct of function, purpose, and conflict; those who seek happiness for itself seek victory without war. — William S. Burroughs

Human, Allen, is an adjective, and its use as a noun is in itself regrettable. — William S. Burroughs

When all lies, deceit, pretense is stripped away, what remains? The truth of a painting, or a book or a man. — William S. Burroughs

Mohammed? Are you kidding? He was dreamed up by the Mecca Chamber of Commerce. — William S. Burroughs

I think anybody incapable of changing his mind is crazy. — William S. Burroughs

Cat hate reflects an ugly, stupid, loutish, bigoted spirit. There can be no compromise with this Ugly Spirit. — William S. Burroughs

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

The figure had emerged from a lightless region where everything we have been taught, all the conventional feelings, do not apply. — William S. Burroughs

Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape. — William S. Burroughs

Tell Allen I plead guilty to vampirism and other crimes against life. But I love him and nothing else cancels love.
— William S. Burroughs

Society is cancerous and bureaucracy is its cancer. — William S. Burroughs

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

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

NOTHING happens by coincidence. — 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

The name's Clem Williamson Snide. I am a private asshole. — William S. Burroughs

A cat's rage is beautiful, burning with pure cat flame, all its hair standing up and crackling blue sparks, eyes blazing and sputtering. — William S. Burroughs

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

The American uppermiddle-class citizen is a composite of negatives. He is largely delineated by what he is not.
- pg. 41 — William S. Burroughs

In the magical universe there are no coincidences and there are no accidents. nothing happens unless someone wills it to happen — William S. Burroughs

Time: a landing field! Death needs time like a junkie needs junk. — William S. Burroughs

Which came first, the intestine or the tapeworm? — William S. Burroughs

I detest limitations of any kind, and intend to establish my ass some place where I am a virgin on the police blotter. — William S. Burroughs

I have learned the junk equation. Junk is not, like alcohol or weed, a means of increased enjoyment of life. Junk is not a kick. It is a way of life. — William S. Burroughs

I like the idea of generalizing the narcotic thing by making it black meat addiction. — William S. Burroughs

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

Nobody owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death. — William S. Burroughs

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

I miss you so much your absence causes me, at times, accute pain. I don't mean sexually. I mean in connection with my writing. — 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

Revolution in America begins in books and music, then waits for political operatives to 'implement changes after the fact.' — William S. Burroughs

You can't fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal. — William S. Burroughs

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

To my way of thinking the function of the poet is to make us aware of what we know and don't know we know. — William S. Burroughs

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

Life is a vacation from two eternities, who wants to waste those precious years worrying about what happens when you get back to forever? — William S. Burroughs

There's a boy across the river with an ass like a peach; alas I was no swimmer and lost my Clementine. — William S. Burroughs

The purpose of technology is not to confuse the brain but to serve the body. — William S. Burroughs

I project myself out through the glasses and across the street, a ghost in the morning sunlight, torn with disembodied lust. — 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

The face of 'evil' is always the face of total need. — William S. Burroughs