William S. Burroughs
I see no reason why the artistic world can't absolutely merge with Madison Avenue. Pop art is a move in that direction. Why can't we have advertisements with beautiful words and beautiful images?
Anything that can be done chemically can be done by other means.
Scientology is a model control system, a state in fact with its own courts, police, rewards and penalties.
An addict never stops growing. Stupider.
Americans have a special horror of giving up control, of letting things happen in their own way without interference.
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.
Virtue is simply happiness, and happiness is a by-product of function. You are happy when you are functioning.
Speaking for myself, art differs from writing in that I never know what I'm going to paint until I paint it, so it's almost like automatic writing. A writer, on the other hand, can't help but know what he's going to write, because the activity demands a degree of premeditation.
The only possible ethic is to do what one wants to do.
Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative.
Thinking is not enough. There is no final enough of wisdom, experience - any... thing.
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.
The world wasn't a more tolerant place when I was a young man. Rather, they simply sidestepped all the issues.
We must all face the fact that our leaders are certifiably insane or worseCollection: Leader
What does the money machine eat? It eats youth, spontaneity, life, beauty, and, above all, it eats creativity. It eats quality and sh*ts quantity.Collection: Creativity
There is nothing more provocative than minding your own business.Collection: Mind Your Own Business
I am not one of those weak-spirited, sappy Americans who want to be liked by all the people around them. 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. My affections, being concentrated over a few people, are not spread all over Hell in a vile attempt to placate sulky, worthless shits.Collection: Positive
Life is a vacation from two eternities, who wants to waste those precious years worrying about what happens when you get back to forever?Collection: Vacation
Build a good name. Keep your name clean. Don't make compromises. Don't worry about making a bunch of money or being successful. Be concerned with doing good work and make the right choices and protect your work. And if you can build a good name, eventually, that name will be its own currency.Collection: Successful
Open your mind and let the pictures outCollection: Mind
When you cut into the present the future leaks out.Collection: Cutting
I think anybody incapable of changing his mind is crazy.Collection: Crazy
Paranoia is just having the right information.Collection: Information
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.Collection: Hurt
To concern yourself with surface political conflicts is to make the mistake of the bull in the ring, you are charging the cloth. That is what politics is for, to teach you the cloth. Just as the bullfighter teaches the bull, teaches him to follow, obey the cloth.Collection: Mistake
It is to be remembered that all art is magical in origin - music, sculpture, writing, painting - and by magical I mean intended to produce very definite results. Paintings were originally formulae to make what is painted happen. Art is not an end in itself, any more than Einstein's matter-into-energy formulae is an end in itself. Like all formulae, art was originally FUNCTIONAL, intended to make things happen, the way an atom bomb happens from Einstein's formulae.Collection: Art
In the magical universe there are no coincidences and there are no accidents. Nothing happens unless someone wills it to happen. The dogma of science is that the will cannot possibly affect external forces, and I think that’s just ridiculous. It’s as bad as the church. My viewpoint is the exact contrary of the scientific viewpoint. I believe that if you run into somebody in the street it’s for a reason.Collection: Running
After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it.Collection: Gun
No one is ever really alone. You are part of everything alive.Collection: Alive
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.Collection: Reality
The cat does not offer services. The cat offers itself.Collection: Cat
The whole point is, I feel the machine should be eliminated. Now that it has served its purpose of alerting us to the dangers of machine control.Collection: Purpose
When people start talking about their bowel movements, they are inexorable as the processes of which they speak.Collection: Talking
A junky runs on junk time. When the junk is cut off, the clock runs down and stops. All he can do is hang on and wait for non-junky time to start. A sick junky has no escape from external time, no place to go. He can only wait.Collection: Running
A paranoid is someone who has all the facts.Collection: Knowledge
Many doctors are drawn to this profession (psychology) because they have an innate deficiency of insight into the motives, feelings and thoughts of others, a deficiency they hope to remedy by ingesting masses of data.Collection: Doctors
Kick is seeing things from a special angle. Kick is momentary freedom from the claims of the aging, cautious, nagging, fightened flesh.Collection: Special
Jesus Christ said 'by their fruits ye shall know them,' not by their disclaimers.Collection: Jesus
Happinessis a byproduct of function. Those who seek happiness for itself seek victory without war.Collection: War
Who was I? The stranger was footsteps in the snow a long time ago.Collection: Long
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.Collection: Magic
Madness is confusion of levels of fact. . . . Madness is not seeing visions but confusing levels.Collection: Confusion
The dream is a spontaneous happening and therefore dangerous to a control system set-up by the non-dreamersCollection: Dream
There is nothing one fears more or is more ashamed of than not being oneself. Yet few people realize even an approximation of their true potential. Most people must live with varying degrees of the shame and fear of not being fully in control of themselves.Collection: People
Knowing you might not make it... in that knowledge courage is born.Collection: Knowing
Whether you sniff it smoke it eat it or shove it up your ass the result is the same: addiction.Collection: Recovery
The whole drug war is nothing but a pretext to increase police power and personnel, and that, of course, is dead wrong. So many created imagined drug offenses.Collection: War
O death where is thy sting? The man is never on time.Collection: Men
Victimless crimes are the lifeline of the RIGHT virus. And there is a growing recognition, even in official quarters, that victimless crimes should be removed from the books or subject to minimal penalties.Collection: Book