William S. Burroughs Short Quotes

25 Sourced Quotes

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A functioning police state needs no police.

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

William S. Burroughs
In deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality.

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

William S. Burroughs
Love? What is it? Most natural painkiller what there is. LOVE.

William S. Burroughs
A paranoid man is a man who knows a little about what's going on.

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

William S. Burroughs
There is nothing more provocative than minding your own business.

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

William S. Burroughs
It's the little touches that make a future solid enough to destroy.

William S. Burroughs
If the soft machine works, don't fix it. If it works, don't fix it.

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

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

William S. Burroughs
No one owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death.

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

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

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

William S. Burroughs
The dark Gods of pain are surfacing from the immemorial filth of time...

William S. Burroughs
As soon as you know you are in prison, you have a possibility to escape.

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

William S. Burroughs
A phenomenon must be to some extent comprehensible to be perceived at all.

William S. Burroughs
Hustlers of the world, there is one Mark you cannot beat: The Mark Inside.

William S. Burroughs
Junk takes everything and gives nothing but insurance against junk sickness.

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

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

William S. Burroughs
Junk is an inoculation of death that keeps the body in a condition of emergency

William S. Burroughs
All of my work is directed against those who are bent on blowing up the planet.

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

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

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

William S. Burroughs