William S. Burroughs
Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact.Collection: Change
You must learn to exist with no religion, no country, no allies. You must learn to live alone in silence.Collection: Alone
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.Collection: Nature
The cat does not offer services. The cat offers itself. Of course he wants care and shelter. You don't buy love for nothing.Collection: Pet
Like all pure creatures, cats are practical.Collection: Pet
Happiness is a byproduct of function, purpose, and conflict; those who seek happiness for itself seek victory without war.Collection: Happiness
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.Collection: Society
Language is a virus from outer space.Collection: Space
After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say 'I want to see the manager.'Collection: Space
The purpose of technology is not to confuse the brain but to serve the body.Collection: Technology
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.Collection: Space
No one owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death.Collection: Death
Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape.Collection: Hope
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.Collection: Business
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.Collection: Space
Admittedly, a homosexual can be conditioned to react sexually to a woman, or to an old boot for that matter. In fact, both homo - and heterosexual experimental subjects have been conditioned to react sexually to an old boot, and you can save a lot of money that way.Collection: Money
There couldn't be a society of people who didn't dream. They'd be dead in two weeks.Collection: Society
The way to kill a man or a nation is to cut off his dreams, the way the whites are taking care of the Indians: killing their dreams, their magic, their familiar spirits.Collection: Dreams
No body of knowledge needs an organizational policy. Organizational policy can only impede the advancement of knowledge. There is a basic incompatibility between any organization and freedom of thought.Collection: Knowledge
In deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality.Collection: Sad
Most serious writers refuse to make themselves available to the things that technology is doing. I've never been able to understand this sort of fear.Collection: Technology
Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer.Collection: Learning
Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing.Collection: Communication
A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on.
Sometimes paranoia's just having all the facts.
Hustlers of the world, there is one mark you cannot beat: the mark inside.
Love? What is it? Most natural painkiller.
Nothing is true, everything is permitted.
A functioning police state needs no police.
My relationships with my cats has saved me from a deadly, pervasive ignorance.
Be just and if you can't be just, be arbitrary.
Hemingway was a prisoner of his style. No one can talk like the characters in Hemingway except the characters in Hemingway. His style in the wildest sense finally killed him.
The face of evil is always the face of total need.
Perhaps all pleasure is only relief.
I am getting so far out one day I won't come back at all.
Our national drug is alcohol. We tend to regard the use any other drug with special horror.
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.
You can't fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.
Most people don't see what's going on around them. That's my principal message to writers: 'For God's sake, keep your eyes open. Notice what's going on around you.'
Changes... can only be effected by alterations in the original. The only thing not prerecorded in a prerecorded universe are the prerecordings themselves. The copies can only repeat themselves word for word. A virus is a copy. You can pretty it up, cut it up, scramble it - it will reassemble in the same form.
Every man has inside himself a parasitic being who is acting not at all to his advantage.
Which came first the intestine or the tapeworm?
Smash the control images. Smash the control machine.
Black magic operates most effectively in preconscious, marginal areas. Casual curses are the most effective.
How I hate those who are dedicated to producing conformity.
A cat's rage is beautiful, burning with pure cat flame, all its hair standing up and crackling blue sparks, eyes blazing and sputtering.
Some people like neat suburbs. I always am attracted to the rundown and the old and the offbeat.
Junk is the ideal product... the ultimate merchandise. No sales talk necessary. The client will crawl through a sewer and beg to buy.
In the U.S., you have to be a deviant or die of boredom.
If everyone is to be made responsible for everything they do, you must extend responsibility beyond the level of conscious intention.