After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say I want to see the
manager.
– William S. Burroughs
Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who
implement change after the fact.
– 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
There is no intensity of love or feeling that does not involve the risk of crippling hurt. It is a
duty to take this risk, to love and feel without defense or reserve.
– William S. Burroughs
Whether you sniff it smoke it, eat it, or shove it up your ass the result is the same:
addiction.
– William S. Burroughs
There couldn’t be a society of people who didn’t dream. They’d be dead in two weeks.
– William S. Burroughs
This is a war universe. War all the time. That is its nature. There may be other universes
based on all sorts of other principles, but ours seems to be based on war and games.
– William S. Burroughs
How I hate those who are dedicated to producing conformity.
– William S. Burroughs
Whether you like it or not, you are committed to the human endeavor. I cannot ally myself
with such a purely negative goal as avoidance of suffering. Suffering is a chance you take by
the fact of being alive.
– William S. Burroughs
The aim of education is the knowledge, not of facts, but of values.
– William S. Burroughs
Most of the trouble in the 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
In the U.S. you have to be a deviant or die of boredom.
– William S. Burroughs
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.
– William S. Burroughs
Every man has inside himself a parasitic being who is acting not at all to his advantage.
– William S. Burroughs
Our national drug is alcohol. We tend to regard the use of any other drug with special horror.
– William S. Burroughs
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.
– William S. Burroughs
When you stop growing you start dying.
– William S. Burroughs
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
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
A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what’s going on.
– 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
You know a real friend? Someone you know will look after your cat after you are gone.
– William S. Burroughs
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
Smash the control images. Smash the control machine.
– William S. Burroughs
In deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality.
– 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
The dream is a spontaneous happening and therefore dangerous to a control system set-up
by the non-dreamers.
– William S. Burroughs
You can’t fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.
– 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
There is nothing more provocative than minding your own business.
– William S. Burroughs
Love? What is it? Most natural painkiller what there is.
– William S. Burroughs
Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing.
– 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