William S. Burroughs

Love? What is it? Most natural painkiller.

In my writing I am acting as a map maker, an explorer of psychic areas, a cosmonaut of inner space, and I see no point in exploring areas that have already been thoroughly surveyed.

Which came first the intestine or the tapeworm?

Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing.

There is nothing more provocative than minding your own business

Hustlers of the world, there is one mark you cannot beat: the mark inside.

Language is a virus from outer space.

The Planet drifts to random insect doom.

There is nothing more provocative than minding your own business.

Every man has inside himself a parasitic being who is acting not at all to his advantage.

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

Like all pure creatures, cats are practical.

A functioning police state needs no police.

The only possible ethic is to do what one wants to do.

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

The photo collage is a way to travel that must be used with skill and precision if we are to arrive... The collage as a flexible hieroglyph language of juxtaposition A collage makes a statement.

The aim of education is the knowledge, not of facts, but of values.

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

Speaking for myself, art differs from writing in that I never know what I'm going to paint until I paint it, so it's almost like automatic writing. A writer, on the other hand, can't help but know what he's going to write, because the activity demands a degree of premeditation.

In the U.S., you have to be a deviant or die of boredom.

The face of evil is always the face of total need.

Be just and if you can't be just, be arbitrary.

The cat does not offer services. The cat offers itself. Of course he wants care and shelter. You dont buy love for nothing. Like all pure creatures cats are practical.

The purpose of technology is not to confuse the brain but to serve the body.

There couldn't be a society of people who didn't dream. They'd be dead in two weeks.

In exorcism a verbal argument can never do anything. You cant ever beat the entity in a verbal argument because thats what he wants. Its only through a confront a non verbal confront that anything happens. It has to be non verbal.

Visual art and writing don't exist on an aesthetic hierarchy that positions one above the other, because each is capable of things the other can't do at all. Sometimes one picture is equal to 30 pages of discourse, just as there are things images are completely incapable of communicating.

Man is an artifact designed for space travel. He is not designed to remain in his present biologic state any more than a tadpole is designed to remain a tadpole.

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?

Changes... can only be effected by alterations in the original. The only thing not prerecorded in a prerecorded universe are the prerecordings themselves. The copies can only repeat themselves word for word. A virus is a copy. You can pretty it up, cut it up, scramble it - it will reassemble in the same form.

Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer.

In deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality.

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

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.

Our national drug is alcohol. We tend to regard the use any other drug with special horror.

Sometimes paranoia's just having all the facts.

The cat does not offer services. The cat offers itself. Of course he wants care and shelter. You don't buy love for nothing.

Like most qualities cuteness is delineated by what it isnt. Most people arent 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 isnt.

Black magic operates most effectively in preconscious marginal areas. Casual curses are the most effective.

If everyone is to be made responsible for everything they do, you must extend responsibility beyond the level of conscious intention.

You can't fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.

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

Admittedly, a homosexual can be conditioned to react sexually to a woman, or to an old boot for that matter. In fact, both homo - and heterosexual experimental subjects have been conditioned to react sexually to an old boot, and you can save a lot of money that way.

Thinking is not enough. There is no final enough of wisdom, experience - any... thing.

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

You must learn to exist with no religion, no country, no allies. You must learn to live alone in silence.

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.

A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on.

Smash the control images. Smash the control machine.

Perhaps all pleasure is only relief.

Scientology is a model control system, a state in fact with its own courts, police, rewards and penalties.

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

The most deadly picture is a picture of nothing at all. The colors are there but there is no image nothing.

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.

After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it. I sure as hell wouldn't want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military.

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

Panic is the sudden realization that everything around you is alive.

After a shooting spree they always want to take the guns away from the people who didnt do it. I sure as hell wouldnt want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military.

I am getting so far out one day I won't come back at all.

Anything that can be done chemically can be done by other means.

Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative.

Most of the trouble in this world has been caused by folks who can't mind their own business, because they have no business of their own to mind, any more than a smallpox virus has.

You need a good bedside manner with doctors or you will get nowhere.

Nothing is true, everything is permitted.

A paranoid is someone who has all the facts.

Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact.

How I hate those who are dedicated to producing conformity.

My relationships with my cats has saved me from a deadly, pervasive ignorance.