William S. Burroughs
I certainly wouldn't advocate anyone using drugs on a regular or habitual basis.Collection: Drug
I'm an old-fashioned person, and I don't like informers.Collection: Old Fashioned
I had not taken a bath in a year nor changed my clothes or removed them except to stick a needle every hour in the fibrous grey wooden flesh of heroin addiction. I did absolutely nothing.Collection: Taken
How far would people get in physics if discovery was described as disgusting - "Your formula is disgusting and filthy"? Not very far.Collection: Discovery
If you talk you always end up with politics, it gets nowhere. I mean man it's strictly from the soft typewriter.Collection: Mean
There's a book called Mummy and the people actually seem to have become addicted to mummy dust. And mummy dust was somehow made from people who've died of the most loathsome diseases. It's too bad that [David] Cronenberg didn't see this book, see I only saw it after the film was made. It might have been of interest to him.Collection: Book
I read a lot of books for information, like doctor books, spy books. . . .Collection: Book
The purpose of my writing is to expose and arrest Nova Criminals.Collection: Writing
The exact objectives of Islam Inc. are obscure. Needless to say everyone involved has a different angle, and they all intend to cross each other up somewhere along the line.Collection: Islam
In this world, [of Flash and Filigree] nothing is true, and censure or outrage is simply irrelevant.Collection: World
Dennis Cooper, God help him, is a born writer.Collection: Helping
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.Collection: Sick
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.Collection: Song
If the soft machine works, don't fix it. If it works, don't fix it.Collection: Machines
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.Collection: War
A phenomenon must be to some extent comprehensible to be perceived at all.Collection: Phenomenon
To be an outlaw you must first have a base in law to reject and get out of, I never had such a base. I never had a place I could call home that meant any more than a key to a house, apartment or hotel room. ... Am I alien? Alien from what exactly? Perhaps my home is my dream city, more real than my waking life precisely because it has no relation to waking life.Collection: Dream
For God's sake, keep your eyes open. Notice what's going on around you.Collection: Eye
There is simply no room left for 'freedom from the tyranny of government' since city dwellers depend on it for food, power, water, transportation, protection, and welfare. Your right to live where you want, with companions of your choosing, under laws to which you agree, died in the eighteenth century with Captain Mission. Only a miracle or a disaster could restore it.Collection: Government
You see, should I stand in front of a landscape and paint it, I'm completely ignoring the factor of time. While I am painting it, it's changing, clouds are changing, all sorts of things. So there's the myth there of someone creating in a timeless vacuum.Collection: Clouds
Wouldn't it be great,as Scott Peck suggests, if all medical students had to undergo the symptoms and feeling of a spectrum of illnesses. From acute infections to terminal cancer - and Kuru, the laughing sickness. Just a month for each exposure, controlled of course, and a good heavy dose of excruciating pain. So they'll know what that feels like.Collection: Pain
"I wouldn't be in your position" - old saw. If there is any political move that I would advocate it would be an alliance between America and Red China, if they'd have us.Collection: Moving
I have no message to give the politicians of the world. They're all completely addicted to promiscuous verbalization and I'm quite sure they would not be at all interested in hearing about cut-ups and hieroglyphics and still less interested to hear about silence.Collection: Cutting
Revolution in America begins in books and music, then waits for political operatives to 'implement changes after the fact.'Collection: Book
In exorcism, a verbal argument can never do anything. You can't ever beat the entity in a verbal argument because that's what he wants. It's only through a confront, a non-verbal confront, that anything happens. It has to be non-verbal.Collection: Want
The junk merchant doesn't sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to his product. He does not improve and simplify his merchandise. He degrades and simplifies the client.Collection: Junk
I've seen villages in South America with no police whatever. Then the cops would arrive, then the sanitary inspectors, and before you know it they've got all the problems - crime, juvenile delinquency, the whole works - just like us.Collection: America
[Death is] a gimmick. It's the time-birth-death gimmick. Can't go on much longer, too many people are wising up.Collection: People
As soon as you have a problem, it's insoluble. These things should never have been allowed to happen.Collection: Problem
The American uppermiddle-class citizen is a composite of negatives. He is largely delineated by what he is not.Collection: Class
If a weaker baboon be attacked by a stronger baboon the weaker baboon will either (a) present his hrump fanny I believe is the word, gentlemen, heh heh for passive intercourse or (b) if he is a different type baboon more extrovert and well-adjusted, lead an attack on an even weaker baboon if he can find one.Collection: Believe
I awoke from The Sickness at the age of forty-five, calm and sane, and in reasonably good health except for a weakened liver and the look of borrowed flesh common to all who survive The Sickness... When I speak of drug addiction I do not refer to keif, marijuana or any preparation of hashish, mescaline, Banisteriopsis caapi, LSD6, Sacred Mushrooms or any other drugs of the hallucinogen group... There is no evidence that the use of any hallucinogen results in physical dependence.Collection: Marijuana
I am trying like Klee, to create something that will have a life of its own, that can put me in real danger, a danger which I willingly take on myself.Collection: Real
Many of my characters first came through to me as voices. That's why I use a tape recorder.Collection: Character
The photo collage is a way to travel that must be used with skill and precision if we are to arrive... The collage as a flexible hieroglyph language of juxtaposition: A collage makes a statement.Collection: Skills
Cheat your landlord if you can -- and must -- but do not try to shortchange the Muse.Collection: Change
Take a shot in front of D.L. Probing for a vein in my dirty bare foot... Junkies have no shame... They are impervious to the repugnance of others. It is doubtful if shame can exist in the absence of sexual libido... The junky's shame disappears with his nonsexual sociability which is also dependent on libido.Collection: Dirty
Cheat your landlord if you can and must, but do not try to shortchange the Muse. It cannot be done. You can't fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.Collection: About Writing
Cut word lines – Cut music lines – Smash the control images – Smash the control machine – Burn the books – Kill the priests – Kill! Kill! Kill!Collection: Book
Thanks for the American dream, to vulgarize and falsify until the bare lies shine through. Thanks for a country where nobody’s allowed to mind their own business.Collection: Country
Revolution in America begins in books and music, then waits for political operatives to ‘implement changes after the fact.’Collection: Book
There is no line between the ‘real world’ and ‘world of myth and symbol.’ Objects, sensations, hit with the impact of hallucination.Collection: Real
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