William S. Burroughs Quotes
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51. “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

52. “After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say ‘I want to see the manager.’”

— William S. Burroughs

53. “Perhaps all pleasure is only relief.”

— William S. Burroughs

54. “Last night I woke up with someone squeezing my hand. It was my other hand.”

— William S. Burroughs

55. “Yes, for all of us in the Shakespeare Squadron, writing is just that: not an escape from reality, but an attempt to change reality.”

— William S. Burroughs

56. “Cats didn’t start as mousers. Weasels and snakes and dogs are more efficient as rodent-control agents. I postulate that cats started as psychic companions, as Familiars, and have never deviated from this function.”

— William S. Burroughs

57. “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

58. “Life is a vacation from two eternities.”

— William S. Burroughs

59. “Time: a landing field! Death needs time like a junkie needs junk.”

— William S. Burroughs

60. “I think anybody incapable of changing his mind is crazy.”

— William S. Burroughs

61. “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.”

— William S. Burroughs

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

— William S. Burroughs

63. “Never interfere in a girl and boy fight.”

— William S. Burroughs

64. “Whether you sniff it smoke it eat it or shove it up your ass the result is the same: addiction.”

— William S. Burroughs

65. “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

66. “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

67. “Paranoia is just having the right information.”

— William S. Burroughs

68. “If I knew how much you loved me, I would’ve shot you sooner.”

— William S. Burroughs

69. “Junk is not, like alcohol or weed, a means to increased enjoyment of life. Junk is not a kick. It is a way of life.”

— William S. Burroughs

70. “A psychotic is a guy who’s just found out what’s going on.”

— William S. Burroughs

71. “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

72. “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

73. “How long does it take man to realize that he cannot want what he wants? You have to live in hell to see heaven.”

— William S. Burroughs

74. “It’s the little touches that make a future solid enough to destroy.”

— William S. Burroughs

75. “Rock and Roll adolescent hoodlums storm the streets of all nations. They rush into the Louvre and throw acid in the Mona Lisa’s face.”

— William S. Burroughs

76. “Is Control controlled by its need to control? Answer: yes.”

— William S. Burroughs

77. “Revolution in America begins in books and music, then waits for political operatives to ‘implement changes after the fact.’”

— William S. Burroughs

78. “You know a real friend? Someone you know will look after your cat after you are gone.”

— William S. Burroughs

79. “I’m creating an imaginary – it’s always imaginary – world in which I would like to live.”

— William S. Burroughs

80. “A functioning police state needs no police.”

— William S. Burroughs

81. “Love is a haunting melody that I have never mastered, and I fear I never will.”

— William S. Burroughs

82. “Home is where your ass is and if you want to move you move your ass the first step is learning to change homes with someone else and have someone else’s ass.”

— William S. Burroughs

83. “Too perfect to be sexually attractive.”

— William S. Burroughs

84. “The first and most important thing an individual can do is to become an individual again, decontrol himself, train himself as to what is going on and win back as much independent ground for himself as possible.”

— William S. Burroughs

85. “There isn’t a feeling you can get on drugs that you can’t get without drugs.”

— William S. Burroughs

86. “The self is like a pimping blackmailing chauffeur who gets you from here to there on word lines.”

— William S. Burroughs

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

— William S. Burroughs

88. “Cuando uno deja de crecer empieza a morir.”

— William S. Burroughs

89. “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.”

— William S. Burroughs

90. “It is not the intensity but the duration of pain that breaks the will to resist.”

— William S. Burroughs

91. “America is not so much a nightmare as a non-dream. The American non-dream is precisely a move to wipe the dream out of existence. The dream is a spontaneous happening and therefore dangerous to a control system set up by the non-dreamers.”

— William S. Burroughs

92. “Cat hate reflects an ugly, stupid, loutish, bigoted spirit. There can be no compromise with this Ugly Spirit.”

— William S. Burroughs

93. “The cat does not offer services. The cat offers itself.”

— William S. Burroughs

94. “England is like some stricken beast too stupid to know it is dead. Ingloriously foundering in its own waste products, the backlash and bad karma of empire.”

— William S. Burroughs

95. “I am not a person and I am not an animal. There is something I am here for something I must do before I can go.”

— William S. Burroughs

96. “Well as, one judge said to the other, ‘Be just and if you can’t be just be arbitrary.’ Regret cannot observe customary obscenities.”

— William S. Burroughs

97. “I don’t care if people hate my guts; I assume most of them do. The important question is whether they are in a position to do anything about it.”

— William S. Burroughs

98. “The exact objectives of Islam Inc. are obscure. Needless to say everyone involved has a different angle, and they all intend to cross each other up somewhere along the line.”

— William S. Burroughs

99. “I think the ideal situation for a family is to be completely incestuous.”

— William S. Burroughs

100. “No one owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death.”

— William S. Burroughs