Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" 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. "

William S. Burroughs

Related Quotes:

" Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer. "

William S. Burroughs

" A cat's rage is beautiful, burning with pure cat flame, all its hair standing up and crackling blue sparks, eyes blazing and sputtering. "

William S. Burroughs

" 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. "

William S. Burroughs

" Our national drug is alcohol. We tend to regard the use any other drug with special horror. "

William S. Burroughs

" 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. "

William S. Burroughs

" 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. "

William S. Burroughs

" In the U.S., you have to be a deviant or die of boredom. "

William S. Burroughs

" 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. "

William S. Burroughs

" 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. "

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

" Love? What is it? Most natural painkiller. "

William S. Burroughs

" 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. "

William S. Burroughs

" Hustlers of the world, there is one mark you cannot beat: the mark inside. "

William S. Burroughs

" Visual art and writing don't exist on an aesthetic hierarchy that positions one above the other, because each is capable of things the other can't do at all. Sometimes one picture is equal to 30 pages of discourse, just as there are things images are completely incapable of communicating. "

William S. Burroughs

" 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. "

William S. Burroughs

" Junk is the ideal product... the ultimate merchandise. No sales talk necessary. The client will crawl through a sewer and beg to buy. "

William S. Burroughs

" The cat does not offer services. The cat offers itself. Of course he wants care and shelter. You don't buy love for nothing. "

William S. Burroughs

" Perhaps all pleasure is only relief. "

William S. Burroughs

" A functioning police state needs no police. "

William S. Burroughs

" My relationships with my cats has saved me from a deadly, pervasive ignorance. "

William S. Burroughs

" Language is a virus from outer space. "

William S. Burroughs

" You must learn to exist with no religion, no country, no allies. You must learn to live alone in silence. "

William S. Burroughs

" Happiness is a byproduct of function, purpose, and conflict; those who seek happiness for itself seek victory without war. "

William S. Burroughs

" Smash the control images. Smash the control machine. "

William S. Burroughs

" A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on. "

William S. Burroughs

" Scientology is a model control system, a state in fact with its own courts, police, rewards and penalties. "

William S. Burroughs

" I am getting so far out one day I won't come back at all. "

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

" No one owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death. "

William S. Burroughs

" 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. "

William S. Burroughs