Authors
Topics
Lists
Pictures
Resources
More about William S. Burroughs
William S. Burroughs Quotes
216 Sourced Quotes
Source
Report...
Strip your psyche to the bare bones of spontaneous process, and you give yourself one chance in a thousand to make the Pass.
William S. Burroughs
Source
Report...
They tend to be suspicious, bristly, paranoid-type people with huge egos they push around like some elephantiasis victim with his distended testicles in a wheelbarrow terrified no doubt that some skulking ingrate of a clone student will sneak into his very brain and steal his genius work.
William S. Burroughs
Source
Report...
How far would people get in physics if discovery was described as disgusting - "Your formula is disgusting and filthy"? Not very far.
William S. Burroughs
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
Take a shot in front of D.L. Probing for a vein in my dirty bare foot... Junkies have no shame... They are impervious to the repugnance of others. It is doubtful if shame can exist in the absence of sexual libido... The junky's shame disappears with his nonsexual sociability which is also dependent on libido...
William S. Burroughs
Source
Report...
Addiction is a disease of exposure. Doctors and nurses, for instance, have a high addiction rate.
William S. Burroughs
Source
Report...
The broken image of Man moves in minute by minute and cell by cell.... Poverty, hatred, war, police-criminals, bureaucracy, insanity, all symptoms of The Human Virus.
William S. Burroughs
Source
Report...
We have a great elaborate machine which I feel has to be completely dismantled - in order to do that we need people who understand how the machine works - the mass media - unparalleled opportunity.
William S. Burroughs
Source
Report...
The forward step must be made in silence. We detach ourselves from word forms - this can be accomplished by substituting for words, letters, concepts, verbal concepts, other modes of expressions: for example, color.
William S. Burroughs
Source
Report...
The more absolute the need, the more predictable the behavior becomes until it is mathematically certain.
William S. Burroughs
Source
Report...
The purpose of my writing is to expose and arrest Nova Criminals.
William S. Burroughs
Source
Report...
All political organizations tend to function like a machine, to eliminate the unpredictable factor of affect - emotion.
William S. Burroughs
Source
Report...
If you weren't surprised by your life you wouldn't be alive. Life is surprise.
William S. Burroughs
Source
Report...
If the soft machine works, don't fix it. If it works, don't fix it.
William S. Burroughs
Source
Report...
I'm definitely antiscientist because I feel that science represents a conspiracy to impose as the real and only universe, the universe of scientists themselves - they're reality-addicts, they've got to have things so real so they can get their hands on it.
William S. Burroughs
Source
Report...
Any belief in Creators or Purpose is wishful thinking. And when you point out that perhaps ALL thinking is wishful, reactions of intense irritation give evidence that we are not dealing with logic but with faith.
William S. Burroughs
Source
Report...
Given certain known factors in an equation and the equation comprising a situation of absolute need - any form of need - you can predict the results. Leave a sick junkie in the back room of a drugstore and only one result is possible.
William S. Burroughs
Source
Report...
I feel that opiates - I include opium and all its derivatives, such as morphine, heroin, pantopon, etc. - are quite useless for any sort of creative work, useful though they may be for routine work. Much of the hard physical work in the Far East is done by opium addicts.
William S. Burroughs
Source
Report...
It's a tract against capital punishment in the genre of Swift's Modest Proposal. I was simply following a formula to its logical conclusion. Some people appear to have understood it. The publication of Naked Lunch in England practically coincided with their abolition of capital punishment. The book obviously had a certain effect.
William S. Burroughs
Source
Report...
I think that Richard Nixon will go down in history as a true folk hero, who struck a vital blow to the whole diseased concept of the revered image and gave the American virtue of irreverence and skepticism back to the people.
William S. Burroughs
Source
Report...
Last night I woke up with someone squeezing my hand. It was my other hand.
William S. Burroughs
Source
Report...
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.
William S. Burroughs
Source
Report...
The Nova Mob doesn't have motives, as we understand motives. "Sex is profoundly distasteful to a being of my mineral origin," as a leader of the Nova Mob, Mr. Bradley-Mr. Martin, said on one occasion.
William S. Burroughs
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
Now all politicians assume a necessity of control, the more efficient the control the better.
William S. Burroughs
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
Quote of the day
Autumn burned brightly, a running flame through the mountains, a torch flung to the trees.
Faith Baldwin
William S. Burroughs
Born:
February 5, 1914
Died:
August 2, 1997
(aged 83)
Bio:
William Seward Burroughs II was an American novelist, short story writer, satirist, essayist, painter, and spoken word performer.
Known for:
Naked Lunch (1959)
Junkie (1953)
The Soft Machine (1961)
Cities of the Red Night (1981)
Nova Express (1964)
Most used words:
junk
people
life
human
control
writing
virus
matter
time
kill
eyes
mind
man
dream
love
William S. Burroughs on Wikipedia
Suggest an edit or a new quote
William S. Burroughs Quotes
William S. Burroughs Short Quotes
Quotes about William S. Burroughs
American Essayist Quotes
Essayist Quotes
20th-century Essayist Quotes
Related People
Allen Ginsberg
American Poet
Jack Kerouac
American Poet
Neal Cassady
American Poet
Brion Gysin
Canadian Artist
Featured Authors
Lists
Predictions that didn't happen
If it's on the Internet it must be true
Remarkable Last Words (or Near-Last Words)
Picture Quotes
Confucius
Philip James Bailey
Eleanor Roosevelt
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Popular Topics
life
love
nature
time
god
power
human
mind
work
art
heart
thought
men
day
×
Lib Quotes