William S. Burroughs
Ever see a hot shot hit, kid? I saw the Gimp catch one in Philly. We rigged his room with a one-way whorehouse mirror and charged a sawski to watch it. He never got the needle out of his arm. They don't if the shot is right. That's the way they find them, dropper full of clotted blood hanging out of a blue arm. The look in his eyes when it hit --- Kid, it was tasty.Collection: Kids
Death needs time for what it kills to grow in.Collection: Needs
The hallucinogens produce visionary states, sort of, but morphine and its derivatives decrease awareness of inner processes, thoughts and feelings. They are pain killers; pure and simple. They are absolutely contraindicated for creative work, and I include in the lot alcohol, morphine, barbiturates, tranquilizers the whole spectrum of sedative drugs.Collection: Pain
Belief is a meaningless word. What does it mean? I believe something. Okay, now you have someone who is hearing voices and believes in these voices. It doesn't mean they have any necessary reality. Your whole concept of your "I" is an illusion. You have to give something called an "I" before you speak of what the "I" believes.Collection: Believe
Life is a vacation from two eternities.Collection: Vacation
Artists to my mind are the real architects of change.Collection: Real
Society is cancerous and bureaucracy is its cancer.Collection: Cancer
The nonconformist here may be "beat down" by life but still has a beauty in his or her longing for freedom and for an awakening of the mind.Collection: Mind
Is Control controlled by its need to control? Answer: yes.Collection: Needs
Intelligence and war are games, perhaps the only meaningful games left. If any player becomes too proficient, the game is threatened with termination.Collection: Meaningful
If I knew how much you loved me, I would’ve shot you sooner.Collection: Shots
The more absolute the need, the more predictable the behavior becomes until it is mathematically certain.Collection: Needs
Consider the impasse of a one-God universe. He is all-knowing and all-powerful. He can't go anywhere, since He is already everywhere. He can't do anything, since the act of doing presupposes opposition. His universe is irrevocably thermodynamic, having no friction by definition. So, He has to create friction: War, Fear, Sickness, Death, to keep his dying show on the road.Collection: Powerful
For seven days she lay in bed looking sullenly at the ceiling as though resenting the death she had cultivated for so many years. Like some people who cannot vomit despite horrible nausea, she lay there unable to die, resisting death as she had resisted life, frozen with resentment of process and change.Collection: Years
Once the law starts asking questions, there's no stopping them.Collection: Asking Questions
I project myself out through the glasses and across the street, a ghost in the morning sunlight, torn with disembodied lust.Collection: Morning
If you consider any set of data without a preconceived viewpoint, then a viewpoint will emerge from the data.Collection: Data
Writing prejudicial, off-putting reviews is a precise exercise in applied black magic. The reviewer can draw free-floating disagreeable associations to a book by implying that the book is completely unimportant without saying exactly why, and carefully avoiding any clear images that could capture the reader's full attention.Collection: Book
Never interfere in a girl and boy fight.Collection: Girl
As a young child I wanted to be a writer because writers were rich and famous. They lounged around Singapore and Rangoon smoking opium in a yellow pongee silk suit. They sniffed cocaine in Mayfair and they penetrated forbidden swamps with a faithful native boy and lived in the native quarter of Tangier smoking hashish and languidly caressing a pet gazelle.Collection: Children
Thanks, for a country where nobody is allowed to mind his own business. Thanks, for a nation of finks.Collection: Country
We should exterminate all rational thought.Collection: Should
By the flaws in the picture the truth will emerge.Collection: Flaws
Piss off Satan and don't take me for dumber than I look.Collection: Fear
I'm creating an imaginary — it's always imaginary — world in which I would like to live.Collection: Creating
There are no innocent bystanders.Collection: Bystanders
I don't have any politics. I feel that as soon as politics arises, things are already in a hopeless state of deterioration.Collection: Deterioration
The word is now a virus.Collection: Viruses
People have nothing to say, but they are afraid of saying nothing, so what they do say comes out flat and vapid and meaningless. The shadow of death is on every face.Collection: Shadow Of Death
I miss you so much your absence causes me, at times, accute pain. I don't mean sexually. I mean in connection with my writing.Collection: Pain
I'm definitely antiscientist because I feel that science represents a conspiracy to impose as the real and only universe, the universe of scientists themselves - they're reality-addicts, they've got to have things so real so they can get their hands on it.Collection: Real
Love? What is it? Most natural painkiller what there is.Collection: Love
The face of "evil" is always the face of total need. A dope fiend is a man in total need of dope. Beyond a certain frequency need knows absolutely no limit or control. In the words of total need: "Wouldn't you?" Yes you would. You would lie, cheat, inform on your friends, steal, do anything to satisfy total need. Because you would be in a state of total sickness, total possession, and not in a position to act in any other way. Dope fiends are sick people who cannot act other than they do. A rabid dog cannot choose but bite.Collection: Funny
Nothing exists until or unless it is observed. An artist is making something exist by observing it. And his hope for other people is that they will also make it exist by observing it. I call it 'creative observation.' Creative viewing.Collection: Creativity
There's no place for impractical dreamers around here.Collection: Dreamer
All abilities are paid for with disabilities. perfect health may entail the heavy toll of bovine stupidity. insight into one area involves blind spots in another.Collection: Honesty
In deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality. It is as final as the mountains: a fact. There it is. When you realize it you cannot complain.Collection: Sadness
I bear my burden proudly for all to see, to conquer prejudice and ignorance and hate with knowledge and sincerity and love. Whenever you are threatened by a hostile presence, you emit a thick cloud of love like an octopus squirts out ink.Collection: Hate
If, after spending time with a person, you feel as though you've lost a quart of plasma, avoid that person in the future.Collection: Spending Time
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.Collection: Real
Human, Allen, is an adjective, and its use as a noun is in itself regrettable.Collection: Adjectives
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.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Marijuana
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.Collection: Book
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.Collection: People
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.Collection: Dream
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.Collection: Country