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. - William S. Burroughs
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. - William S. Burroughs
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. - William S. Burroughs
The price an artist pays for doing what he wants is that he has to do it. - William S. Burroughs
Paranoia means having all the facts. - William S. Burroughs
Junk is the ultimate merchandise. The junk merchant does not sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to the product. He does not improve and simplify his merchandise, he degrades and simplifies the client. - William S. Burroughs
Thinking is not enough. Nothing is. There is no final enough of wisdom, experience--any fucking thing. No Holy Grail, No Final Satori, no final solution. Just conflict. - William S. Burroughs
Paranoia is just having the right information. - William S. Burroughs
Language is a virus from outer space - William S. Burroughs
when I become death. Death is the seed from which I grow. - William S. Burroughs
A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on. - William S. Burroughs
Why are we here? We're here to go! - William S. Burroughs
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. - William S. Burroughs
Every man has inside himself a parasitic being who is acting not at all to his advantage. - William S. Burroughs
In the U.S. you have to be a deviant or exist in extreme boredom... Make no mistake, all intellectuals are deviants in the U.S. - William S. Burroughs
As one judge said to another judge: be just. And if you can’t be just, be arbitrary - William S. Burroughs
Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape. - William S. Burroughs
Poverty, hatred, war, police-criminals, bureaucracy, insanity, all symptoms of The Human Virus. - William S. Burroughs
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. - William S. Burroughs
We intend to destroy all dogmatic verbal systems. - William S. Burroughs
Anything that can be done chemically can be done by other means. - William S. Burroughs
Nobody owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death. - William S. Burroughs
The first and most important thing an individual can do is to become an individual again, decontrol himself, train himself as to what is going on and win back as much independent ground for himself as possible - William S. Burroughs
The dream is a spontaneous happening and therefore dangerous to a control system set-up by the non-dreamers - William S. Burroughs
Intelligence and war are games, perhaps the only meaningful games left. If any player becomes too proficient, the game is threatened with termination. - William S. Burroughs
How long does it take man to realize that he cannot want what he wants? You have to live in hell to see heaven. - William S. Burroughs
That old feeling is still in my leaking heart. - William S. Burroughs
After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say "I want to see the manager." - William S. Burroughs
A functioning police state needs no police. - William S. Burroughs
Jesus Christ said 'by their fruits ye shall know them,' not by their disclaimers. - William S. Burroughs