William S. Burroughs Quotes - Page 14

Dennis Cooper, God help him, is a born writer.

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.

What originally established the band was cover songs like Not Fade Away. Then, later on, we got more well-known ones like Satisfaction, which you might say echoed the thinking of, well, any generation you care to name, including the present one. But we didn't set out on bits of paper that we were going to be the voice of a generation. The original aim of the Rolling Stones was to play blues. It wasn't even to play rock music.

In the event of atomic war there is a tremendous biological advantage in the so-called undeveloped areas that have a high birth rate and high death rate because, man, they can plow under those mutations.

Well, "disgusting" doesn't refer to the books but to the subjective reaction of the person making the complaint. I don't think that anything is disgusting per se. These words "disgusting" and "filthy," etc., have prevented us from undertaking any scientific experimentation in sexual matters.

Kerouac opened a million coffee bars and sold a million pairs of Levis to both sexes. Woodstock rises from his pages.

The world wasn't a more tolerant place when I was a young man. Rather, they simply sidestepped all the issues.

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

He is a boy sleeping against the mosque wall, ejaculates wet dreaming into a thousand cunts pink and smooth as sea shells.

Forward steps are made by giving up old armor because words are built into you - in the soft typewriter of the womb you do not realize the word-armor you carry; for example, when you read this page your eyes move irresistibly from left to right following the words that you have been accustomed to.

Tell Allen I plead guilty to vampirism and other crimes against life. But I love him and nothing else cancels love.

Biologically speaking the Afro-Asiatic block is in the ascendancy - always remember that both Negro and White are minority groups - the largest race is the Mongoloid group.

Anything that can be done chemically can be done by other means.

I like the idea of generalizing the narcotic thing by making it black meat addiction.

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.

Some people like neat suburbs. I always am attracted to the rundown and the old and the offbeat.

Gentle reader, the Fountain of Youth is radioactive, and those who imbibe its poisonous heavy waters will suffer the hideous fate of decaying metal. Yet almost without exception, the wretched idiot inhabitants of our benighted planet would gulp down this radioactive excrement if it were offered.

I think Judge Learned Hand was a cultured, intelligent man.

I wasn't exposed to art as I was growing up, and can't recall the first time I saw a work of art. However, I remember very clearly a vision I had of a little green reindeer when I was a child, and visions emanate from the same mythical area where painting resides. Whatever the reason, I immediately felt comfortable working with visual materials.

The essence of White Supremacy is this: they are people who want to keep things as they are. That their children's children's children might be a different color is something very alarming to them - in short they are committed to the maintenance of the static image.

In Mexico your wishes have a dream power. When you want to see someone, he turns up.

Death was in every sell of his body. He gave off a faint, greenish steam of decay. Lee imagined he would glow in the dark.

I don't go into hysterics or anything, but I look around for something to smash it with. I used to live out in the country when I first moved here, and there were a lot of centipedes in the house, and I set out to kill them all. A program of genocide. I'd wake up in the middle of the night, and I'd know there's a centipede in this room. And there always was. And I couldn't go to sleep until I killed it.

It is indeed difficult to make a living as a writer, and my advice to anyone contemplating a literary career is to have some other trade.

I knew [Timothy] Leary, but barely knew, didn't really know Jan [Kerouac].