William S. Burroughs Quotes - Page 13

When you get to be my age there are more and more people you have known that you miss. Brion [Gysin], Antony Balch, Ian Summerville are ones I think of right away I was quite close to.

Mr. Bradley-Mr. Martin is two people because it is a statement of the impasse of dualistic universe which he has created, they have created. I think that any dualistic universe ends in Nova. Mr. Bradley-Mr. Martin is a kind of God. A God of stupidity, cowardice, ugliness.

The only way I like to see cops given flowers is in a flower pot from a high window.

I awoke from The Sickness at the age of forty-five, calm and sane, and in reasonably good health except for a weakened liver and the look of borrowed flesh common to all who survive The Sickness.

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.

I certainly wouldn't advocate anyone using drugs on a regular or habitual basis.

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

I took a shot of morphine, liked it, and eventually became addicted. It takes quite a while. It took me three months the first time. This nonsense of people becoming addicted with one shot is medically unsound.

I'm an old-fashioned person, and I don't like informers.

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.

Last night I encountered a dream cat with a very long neck and a body like a human fetus, gray and transluscent. I don't know what it needs or how to provide for it. Another dream years ago of a human child with eyes on stalks. It is very small, but can walk and talk "Don't you want me?" Again, I don't know how to care for the child. But I am dedicated to protecting and nurturing him at any cost! It is the function of the Guardian to protect hybrids and mutants in the vulnerable stage of infancy.

The country with a low birth rate and low death rate will be hardest hit - and so the poor may indeed inherit the earth, because they're healthier.

Most all methods of capitol punishment are designed to inflict the maximum of humiliation - not attempts to prevent suicide.

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

My characters are quite as real to me as so-called real people; which is one reason why I'm not subject to what is known as loneliness. I have plenty of company.

Any unchecked impulse does, within the human body and psyche, lead to the destruction of the organism.

For instance, they [The Federal Narcotics Bureau ] give out that marijuana is a harmful and habit-forming drug, and it simply isn't. They claim that you can get addicted to opiates with one shot, and you can't. They over-estimate the physical bad effects, and so forth.

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

There's a book called Mummy and the people actually seem to have become addicted to mummy dust. And mummy dust was somehow made from people who've died of the most loathsome diseases. It's too bad that [David] Cronenberg didn't see this book, see I only saw it after the film was made. It might have been of interest to him.

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.

I had not taken a bath in a year nor changed my clothes or removed them except to stick a needle every hour in the fibrous grey wooden flesh of heroin addiction. I did absolutely nothing.

In this world, [of Flash and Filigree] nothing is true, and censure or outrage is simply irrelevant.

If you talk you always end up with politics, it gets nowhere. I mean man it's strictly from the soft typewriter.

How far would people get in physics if discovery was described as disgusting - "Your formula is disgusting and filthy"? Not very far.

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.