William S. Burroughs quotes - page 5

Every time I hit Panama, the place is exactly one month, two months, six months more nowhere, like the progress of a degenerative illness. A shift from arithmetic to geometric progressive seems to have occurred. Something ugly and ignoble and subhuman is cooking in this mongrel town of pimps and whores and recessive genes, this degraded leech on the Canal. (William S. Burroughs)
In the fields workers are planting maize seeds under the direction of an overseer with staff and headdress. Close-up of a worker's face. Whatever it is that makes a man a man, all feeling and all soul has gone out in that face. Nothing is left but body needs and body pleasures. I have seen faces like that in the back wards of state hospitals for the insane. Faces that live to eat, shit and masturbate. View quote
William S. Burroughs
Americans have a special horror of giving up control, of letting things happen in their own way without interference. They would like to jump down into their stomachs and digest the food and shovel the shit out. View quote
William S. Burroughs
No job too dirty for a fucking scientist. View quote
William S. Burroughs
Which came first the intestine or the tapeworm? View quote
William S. Burroughs
No one owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death. View quote
William S. Burroughs
You must learn to exist with no religion, no country, no allies. You must learn to live alone in silence. View quote
William S. Burroughs
Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing. View quote
William S. Burroughs
The purpose of technology is not to confuse the brain but to serve the body. View quote
William S. Burroughs
Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact. View quote
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)
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. View quote
William S. Burroughs
In my writing I am acting as a map maker, an explorer of psychic areas, a cosmonaut of inner space, and I see no point in exploring areas that have already been thoroughly surveyed. View quote
William S. Burroughs
Black magic operates most effectively in preconscious, marginal areas. Casual curses are the most effective. View quote
William S. Burroughs
Admittedly, a homosexual can be conditioned to react sexually to a woman, or to an old boot for that matter. In fact, both homo - and heterosexual experimental subjects have been conditioned to react sexually to an old boot, and you can save a lot of money that way. View quote
William S. Burroughs
Every man has inside himself a parasitic being who is acting not at all to his advantage. View quote
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. View quote
William S. Burroughs
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. View quote
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. View quote
William S. Burroughs
Well as, one judge said to the other, 'Be just and if you can't be just be arbitrary.' Regret cannot observe customary obscenities. View quote
William S. Burroughs
I saw the Colonel empty his revolver and go down under ten wild boys. A moment later they tossed his bleeding head into the air and started a ball game. Just at dusk the wild boys got up and padded away. They left the bodies stripped to the skin many with genitals cut off. The wild boys make little testicles in which they carry their hasish and khat. (William S. Burroughs)
Youth rebellion is a world wide phenomenon that has not been seen before in history. I don't believe they will calm down and be ad execs at thirty as the establishment would like to believe. Millions of young people all over the world are fed up with shallow unworthy authority running on a platform of bullshit. View quote
William S. Burroughs
Remember the Italian steward who put on women's clothes and so filched a seat in a lifeboat? "A cur in human shape, certainly he was born and saved to set a new standard by which to judge infamy and shame. View quote
William S. Burroughs
You can't fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal. View quote
William S. Burroughs
You know, they ask me if I were on a desert island and I knew nobody would ever see what I wrote, would I go on writing. My answer is most emphatically yes. I would go on writing for company. Because I'm creating an imaginary - it's always imaginary - world in which I would like to live. View quote
William S. Burroughs