William S. Burroughs Quotes - Page 3

If you are asking me what the individual can do right now, in a political sense, I'd have to say he can't do all that much. Speaking for myself, I am more concerned with the transformation of the individual, which to me is much more important than the so-called political revolution.

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.

When you stop growing you start dying.

I prefer cats to people, for the most part. Most people aren't cute at all, and if they are cute they very rapidly outgrow it.

I don't know what falling in love for me is. The concept of romantic love arose in the Middle Ages. Now remember, the Arabs don't even have a word for love-that is, a word for love apart from physical attraction or sex. And this separation of love and sex is a western concept, a Christian concept. As to what falling in love means, I'm uncertain. Love, well, it means simply physical attraction and liking a person at the same time.

I began to get a feeling familiar to me from my bartending days of being the only sane man in a nuthouse. It doesn't make you feel superior but depressed and scared, because there is nobody you can contact.

Language is a virus from outer space.

The cat does not offer services. The cat offers itself.

One very important aspect of art is that it makes people aware of what they know and don’t know they know... Once the breakthrough is made, there is a permanent expansion of awareness. But there is always a reaction of rage, of outrage, at the first breakthrough... So the artist, then, expands awareness. And once the breakthrough is made, this becomes part of the general awareness.

I am getting so far out one day I won't come back at all.

what a horrible loutish planet this is. the dominant species consists of sadistic morons, faces bearing the hideous lineaments of spiritual famine swollen with stupid hate. hopeless rubbish.

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.

There is no line between the 'real world' and 'world of myth and symbol.' Objects, sensations, hit with the impact of hallucination.

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.

Black magic operates most effectively in preconscious, marginal areas. Casual curses are the most effective.

Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing.

By the flaws in the picture the truth will emerge.

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.

We should exterminate all rational thought.

Society is cancerous and bureaucracy is its cancer.

Sometimes paranoia's just having all the facts.

Nothing is true, everything is permitted.

The word is now a virus.

I'm creating an imaginary — it's always imaginary — world in which I would like to live.

There isn't a feeling you can get on drugs that you can't get without drugs.