I know that Nature designs that this whole continent, not merely these thirty-six states, shall be, sooner or later, within the magic circle of the American union.


William S. Burroughs

  Email Quote to Friends   Link to Quote   Create Short URL  Publish Text About This Quote   Share on Facebook, Twitter, and more
  See Recommended Quotes For You

Related

After 1957 On The Road sold a trillion levis and a million espresso coffee machines, and also sent c...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
The two men had a conversation. Brief, cryptic, to the point. As though they had exchanged numbers a...
ARUNDHATI ROY
If a man or woman is born ten years sooner or later, their whole aspect and performance shall be dif...
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
If a man or woman is born ten years sooner or later, their whole aspect and performance shall be dif...
JOHANN VON GOETHE
But Shakespeare's magic could not copied be; Within that circle none durst walk but he.
JOHN DRYDEN
The tides are in our veins, we still mirror the stars, life is your child, but there is in me
O...
ROBINSON JEFFERS
Scarcely any political question arises in the United States that is not resolved, sooner or later, i...
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
The gypsy in my soul is living on the road again, ... When I first started my career, I was on the r...
MAUREEN MCGOVERN
Sooner or later that which is now life shall be poetry, and every fair and manly trait shall add a r...
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Sooner or later that which is now life shall be poetry, and every fair and manly trait shall add a r...
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
During this period of his life, Burroughs was seeking a physical utopia, a place where he could live...
GREG A. MULLINS
Do I have the courage of being a ruthless man to myself with the complete knowledge on my manner or ...
FEREIDOON YAZDI
If slavery be the destined sword of the hand of the destroying angel which is to sever the ties of t...
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS
It merely says, and I quote, 'equality of rights shall not be denied or abridged by the United State...
CAROLYN MALONEY
It is part of the nature of every definitive love that sooner or later it can reach the beloved only...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Everything is in the hands of God. We know that if God wants, sooner or later Ahmed will be released...
AHMED ABU
Everything is in the hands of God. We know that if God wants, sooner or later Ahmed will be released...
AHMED OMAR ABU ALI
Sooner of later that which is now life shall be poetry, and every fair and manly trait shall add a r...
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
My poor body, madam, requires it: I am driven on by the flesh; and he must needs go that the devil d...
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Sooner or later I'm going to die, but I'm not going to retire.
MARGARET MEAD
Sooner or later, we sell out for money.
TONY RANDALL
I think that slavery is wrong, morally, socially and politically. I desire that it should be no furt...
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
This is my fundamental teaching: that there is no division between this and that. That is contained ...
OSHO
I think there is a sense that, sooner or later, this will happen.
DR. MARK HORTON
Sooner or later in life everyone discovers that perfect happiness is unrealizable, but there are few...
PRIMO LEVI
Whatever your feelings may be about William Clinton the man, or William Clinton the political ally o...
CHARLES RUFF
This city's going to really hum, hopefully sooner than later, ... This is the American dream.
OSCAR GOODMAN
Millions of people acknowledge today that they do not know the meaning of life.
JAMES C. DOBSON
There is hardly a political question in the United States which does not sooner or later turn into a...
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
There is hardly a political question in the United States which does not sooner or later turn into a...
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
Sooner or later everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
Getting fired is what happens to a manager sooner or later.
JOE TORRE
Sooner or later, those who win are those who think they can.
PAUL TOURNIER
perennial truths of financial history. Sooner or later every bubble bursts. Sooner or later the bear...
NIALL FERGUSON
Even after the dehadhyas (the belief that 'I am the body') has gone, people will say, "I saw you eat...
DADA BHAGWAN
I do not support a North American Union. I disagree fundamentally with that, and I think the United ...
SAM BROWNBACK
It seemed to me that every adult did something terrible sooner or later. And every child, I thought,...
LEMONY SNICKET
It is every intelligent man's experience that evildoing recoils on the doer sooner or later.
RAMANA MAHARSHI
Space technology can and does fail on occasions. Our feeling is that as you escalate the number of t...
BRUCE GAGNON
It is within the last quarter century or thirty years. And a lot of that law has turned out to be ve...
FLOYD ABRAMS
The more one analyses people, the more all reasons for analysis disappear. Sooner or later one comes...
OSCAR WILDE
I think there's a lot of things that occur within the African-American community, that we would ...
GABRIELLE UNION
I had forgotten that God, or the world, or whatever carves the rules in stone, doesn't give you time...
TANA FRENCH
From the day of the Declaration, the people of the North American union, and of its constituent stat...
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS
Everybody sooner or later has to drop the luggage and the baggage of illusions.
CARLOS SANTANA
Each piece, or part, of the whole of nature is always merely an approximation to the complete truth,...
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN
You could cover the whole earth with asphalt, but sooner or later green grass would break through.
ILYA EHRENBURG
It's all to do with the training: you can do a lot if you're properly trained.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
Like all best families, we have our share of eccentricities, of impetuous and wayward youngsters and...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
My husband has quite simply been my strength and stay all these years, and I owe him a debt greater ...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
It is easy enough to define what the Commonwealth is not. Indeed this is quite a popular pastime.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
I have to be seen to be believed.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
I have in sincerity pledged myself to your service, as so many of you are pledged to mine. Throughou...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
I hope that tomorrow we can all, wherever we are, join in expressing our grief at Diana's loss, ...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
I myself prefer my New Zealand eggs for breakfast.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
The British constitution has always been puzzling and always will be.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
I have behind me not only the splendid traditions and the annals of more than a thousand years but t...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
To what greater inspiration and counsel can we turn than to the imperishable truth to be found in th...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
What were once only hopes for the future have now come to pass; it is almost exactly 13 years since ...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
First, I want to pay tribute to Diana myself. She was an exceptional and gifted human being. In good...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
I cannot lead you into battle. I do not give you laws or administer justice but I can do something e...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
To all those who have suffered as a consequence of our troubled past I extend my sincere thoughts an...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
Grief is the price we pay for love.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
The upward course of a nation's history is due in the long run to the soundness of heart of its ...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
At its heart, engineering is about using science to find creative, practical solutions. It is a nobl...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
At Christmas, I am always struck by how the spirit of togetherness lies also at the heart of the Chr...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
For many, Christmas is also a time for coming together. But for others, service will come first.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
The lessons from the peace process are clear; whatever life throws at us, our individual responses w...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your s...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
Therefore I am sure that this, my Coronation, is not the symbol of a power and a splendor that are g...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
We lost the American colonies because we lacked the statesmanship to know the right time and the man...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
Madam President, speaking here in Dublin Castle it is impossible to ignore the weight of history, as...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
These wretched babies don't come until they are ready.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
I know of no single formula for success. But over the years I have observed that some attributes of ...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
The events that I have attended to mark my Diamond Jubilee have been a humbling experience. It has t...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
In remembering the appalling suffering of war on both sides, we recognise how precious is the peace ...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
Like all the best families, we have our share of eccentricities, of impetuous and wayward youngsters...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
No one who knew Diana will ever forget her. Millions of others who never met her, but felt they knew...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
I have been aware all the time that my peoples, spread far and wide throughout every continent and o...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
So far, 44 States, or 88 percent of the States, have enacted laws providing that marriage shall cons...
JACK KINGSTON
The idea that sins can be forgiven is at the root of mankind's problems. Everyone pays...sooner or l...
SOLA KOSOKO
In the end, nature is inexorable: it has no reason to hurry and, sooner or later, it takes what belo...
IVAN TURGENEV
Feast of William Law, Priest, Mystic, 1761 Commemoration of William of Ockham, Franciscan Friar, ...
WILLIAM LAW
Because of the nature of Moore's law, anything that an extremely clever graphics programmer can ...
JOHN CARMACK
We go after legacies because we just know that, sooner or later, people will understand what we brin...
FAT JOE
Sooner or later, we?re going to have flooding. It?s not a matter of if, it?s just when.
DAN MUNDELL
Given the rigorous nature of the study designs and that both clinical trials confirmed the other's r...
DR. SONJA MCKINLAY
You could cover the whole earth with asphalt, but sooner or later green grass would break through
ILYA EHRENBURG
I feel that The American Dream is this fallacy that you come to the United States and win lotto. Tha...
JAMES GRAY
The African Union has formed a standby force aimed at ensuring quick intervention in conflicts arisi...
DEFENSE MINISTER NJENGA KARUME
There is hardly a political question in the United States which doesn't sooner or later turn into a ...
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
Family is the most important thing in the world.
PRINCESS DIANA
With the right help, children have a good chance of overcoming their issues while they are still you...
KATE MIDDLETON
As iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend.
KING SOLOMON
I don't mind a big fascinator. I think there is more scope for artwork in a fascinator rather th...
ZARA PHILLIPS
I don't think I'll still be riding at 40. There are a couple of people who are still riding ...
ZARA PHILLIPS
I'd love to have kids, but not at the moment.
ZARA PHILLIPS
Virtually everything that gets printed about me is wrong anyway, so it doesn't really matter wha...
ZARA PHILLIPS
It's stupid to say that I don't like being in the public eye, but I don't like doing stu...
ZARA PHILLIPS
I'm an affectionate person.
ZARA PHILLIPS

More William S. Burroughs

Virtue is simply happiness, and happiness is a by-product of function. You are happy when you are fu...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
A cat's rage is beautiful, burning with pure cat flame, all its hair standing up and crackling b...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Nothing exists until or unless it is observed. An artist is making something exist by observing it. ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
And if you're doing a deal with a religious son of a bitch, get it in writing.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
I am not one of those weak-spirited, sappy Americans who want to be liked by all the people around t...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
You know a real friend?
Someone you know will look after your cat after you are gone.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
America is not so much a nightmare as a non-dream. The American non-dream is precisely a move to wip...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
America is not a young land: it is old and dirty and evil before the settlers, before the Indians. T...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Which came first the intestine or the tapeworm?
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
There couldn't be a society of people who didn't dream. They'd be dead in two weeks.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Kerouac and I are not real at all. The only thing about a writer is that he has written, and not his...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
In my writing I am acting as a map maker, an explorer of psychic areas. . . a cosmonaut of inner spa...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
A functioning police state needs no police.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Writing prejudicial, off-putting reviews is a precise exercise in applied black magic. The reviewer ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
I think the ideal situation for a family is to be completely incestuous.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Humility is indeed beatness, a compulsory virtue that no one exhibits unless he has to.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
The face of evil is always the face of total need.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
I think there are innumerable gods. What we on earth call God is a little tribal God who has made an...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Man is an artifact designed for space travel. He is not designed to remain in his present biologic s...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
I feel that any form of so called psychotherapy is strongly contraindicated for addicts. The questio...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
This is a war universe. War all the time. That is its nature. There may be other universes based on ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
My general theory since 1971 has been that the word is literally a virus, and that it has not been r...
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
Black magic operates most effectively in preconscious, marginal areas. Casual curses are the most ef...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Junk is the ideal product... the ultimate merchandise. No sales talk necessary. The client will craw...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Now what sort of man or woman or monster would stroke a centipede I have ever seen? And here is my g...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
The people in power will not disappear voluntarily, giving flowers to the cops just isn't going to w...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they h...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Intelligence and war are games, perhaps the only meaningful games left. If any player becomes too pr...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Most of the trouble in this world has been caused by folks who can't mind their own business, becaus...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
So cheat your landlord if you can and must, but do not try to shortchange the Muse. It cannot be don...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
A psychotic is a guy who's just found out what's going on.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Out of the closets and into the museums, libraries, architectural monuments, concert halls, bookstor...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Nothing exists until or unless it is observed. An artist is making something exist by observing it. ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Anything that can be done chemically can be done by other means.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
No atomic physicist has to worry, people will always want to kill other people on a mass scale. Sure...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
They tend to be suspicious, bristly, paranoid-type people with huge egos they push around like some ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
There is the pleasurable orgasm, like a rising sales graph, and there is the unpleasurable orgasm, s...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Admittedly, a homosexual can be conditioned to react sexually to a woman, or to an old boot for that...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
So cheat your landlord if you can and must, but do not try to shortchange the Muse. It cannot be d...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it. I s...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
America is not a young land: it is old and dirty and evil before the settlers, before the Indians. ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Admittedly, a homosexual can be conditioned to react sexually to a woman, or to an old boot for that...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
You must learn to exist with no religion, no country, no allies. You must learn to live alone in sil...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
An addict never stops growing. Stupider.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Changes... can only be effected by alterations in the original. The only thing not prerecorded in a ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it....
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
The cat does not offer services. The cat offers itself. Of course he wants care and shelter. You don...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Like all pure creatures, cats are practical.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Language is a virus from outer space.
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
Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
The aim of education is the knowledge, not of facts, but of values.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
In deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Our national drug is alcohol. We tend to regard the use any other drug with special horror.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
The purpose of technology is not to confuse the brain but to serve the body.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Love? What is it? Most natural painkiller.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
I am getting so far out one day I won't come back at all.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Happiness is a byproduct of function, purpose, and conflict; those who seek happiness for itself see...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Perhaps all pleasure is only relief.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Nothing is true, everything is permitted.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
In my writing I am acting as a map maker, an explorer of psychic areas, a cosmonaut of inner space, ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
My relationships with my cats has saved me from a deadly, pervasive ignorance.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
You can't fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Nobody owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
If a weaker baboon be attacked by a stronger baboon the weaker baboon will either (a) present his hr...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Squatting on old bones and excrement and rusty iron, in a white blaze of heat, a panorama of naked i...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implemen...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
I see no reason why the artistic world can't absolutely merge with Madison Avenue. Pop art is a ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Gentle reader, the Fountain of Youth is radioactive, and those who imbibe its poisonous heavy waters...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Visual art and writing don't exist on an aesthetic hierarchy that positions one above the other,...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Speaking for myself, art differs from writing in that I never know what I'm going to paint until...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
In the U.S. you have to be a deviant or exist in extreme boredom... Make no mistake, all intellectua...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Junk is the ultimate merchandise. The junk merchant does not sell his product to the consumer, he se...
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
Whether you sniff it smoke it eat it or shove it up your ass the result is the same: addiction.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Every man has inside himself a parasitic being who is acting not at all to his advantage.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
The Pusher always gets it all back.
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
Whenever anyone reads his words the writer is there. He lives in his readers.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
A cat's rage is beautiful, burning with pure cat flame, all its hair standing up and crackling blue ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Kerouac opened a million coffee bars and sold a million pairs of Levis to both sexes. Woodstock rise...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
If you rap your knuckles against a window jamb or door, if you brush your leg against a bed or desk,...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Truth is used to vitalize a statement rather than devitalize it. Truth implies more than a simple st...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
when I become death. Death is the seed from which I grow.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
No one owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death.
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 th...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
In fact, they recapitulate the story of Christianity word for word, like the inevitable course of so...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
When I say madness I mean what I see in a nut house: beat, resigned, dim, diffuse, nowhere people. N...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
I'm running out of everything now. Out of veins, out of money.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
The exact objectives of Islam Inc. are obscure. Needless to say everyone involved has a different an...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
(1) Never give anything away for nothing. (2) Never give more than you have to give (always catch th...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Never give succor to the mentally ill; it is a bottomless pit.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
It is doubtful if shame can exist in the absence of sexual libido.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Americans have a special horror of giving up control, of letting things happen in their own way with...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
When I become death, death is the seed from which I grow.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
My experience as an addict was very useful to me as writer: the whole syndrome of addiction and with...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
There is no intensity of love or feeling that does not involve the risk of crippling hurt. It is a d...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
The question is frequently asked: Why does a man become a drug addict?
The answer is that he us...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
The first and most important thing an individual can do is to become an individual again, decontrol ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
A Nazi initiation into the upper reaches of the SS was to gouge out the eye of a pet cat after feedi...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Panic is the sudden realization that everything around you is alive.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
When you stop growing you start dying.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
To put it country simple. Earth has a lot of things other folks might want, like the whole planet. A...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
I don’t care if people hate my guts; I assume most of them do. The important question is whether th...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
England has the most sordid literary scene I've ever seen. They all meet in the same pub. This guy's...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
I don’t care if people hate my guts; I assume most of them do. The important question is whether t...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
I think that Richard Nixon will go down in history as a true folk hero, who struck a vital blow to t...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
The cat does not offer services. The cat offers itself. Of course he wants care and shelter. You don...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Junkies have no interest in sex and they have no interest in other people except as suppliers of jun...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
No worse fate can befall a man than to be surrounded by traitor souls.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
To his secretary after a visit from Kurt Cobain, "There's something wrong with that boy. He frowns f...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
If the mortality rate seems high we must realize that Nature is a ruthless teacher. There are no sec...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
In the U.S. you have to be a deviant or exist in dreary boredom. Make no mistake; all intellectuals ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Man has sold his soul for time, language, tools, weapons, and dominance.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Junk is not, like alcohol or weed, a means to increased enjoyment of life. Junk is not a kick. It is...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
In homosexual sex you know exactly what the other person is feeling, so you are identifying with the...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Madness is confusion of levels of fact. . . . Madness is not seeing visions but confusing levels.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Now what sort of man or woman or monster would stroke a centipede I have ever seen? ''And here is my...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Strip your psyche to the bare bones of spontaneous process, and you give yourself one chance in a th...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
NAKED Lunch -- a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
The only possible ETHIC is to do what one wants to do.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Thanks for the American dream, to vulgarize and falsify until the bare lies shine through. Thanks fo...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
How I hate those who are dedicated to producing conformity.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
In the magical universe there are no coincidences and there are no accidents. Nothing happens unless...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
I was new in the game and like all young thieves thought I had a license to steal. It didn't last.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
We must find out what words are and how they function. They become images when written down, but ima...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Americans have a special horror of giving up control, of letting things happen in their own way with...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
I am getting so far out one day I won't come back at all.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Smash the control images. Smash the control machine.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
I had not taken a bath in a year nor changed my clothes or removed them except to stick a needle eve...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Be just and if you can't be just, be arbitrary.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
The youth rebellion [1968] is a worldwide phenomenon that has not been seen before in history. I do ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
He considered that immortality was the only goal worth striving for. He knew it was not something yo...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Gentle Reader, The Word will leap on you with leopard man iron claws, it will cut off fingers and to...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
I feel that this life is sort of a penal colony. People have goofed or we wouldn't be here.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
The idea that addiction is somehow a psychological illness is, I think, totally ridiculous. It's as ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
All the role models are being exposed and this is good because role models are shit. The quicker we ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
I prefer cats to people, for the most part. Most people aren't cute,
& if they are cute the...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
There is a kidney-shaped fish pool outside the picture window. I cleaned it out and put in some larg...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
And there are my cats, engaged in a ritual that goes back thousands of years, tranquilly licking the...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
The cat does not offer services. The cat offers itself.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Evidence indicates that cats were first tamed in Egypt. The Egyptians stored grain, which attracted ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Cat hate reflects an ugly, stupid, loutish, bigoted spirit. There can be no compromise with this Ugl...
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 ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
All the filth and horror, fear, hate disease and death of human history flows between you and the We...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Writers don't write, they read and transcribe.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
I don't make myself work. It's just the thing I want to do. To be completely alone in a room, to kno...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
We gotta find a way off this goddamn cop-ridden planet.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
The best way to keep something bad from happening is to see it ahead of time... and you can't see it...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
We are like water creatures looking up at the land and air and wondering how we can survive in that ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
All knowledge all discoveries belong to everybody. . . . All knowledge all discoveries belong to you...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
There is no line between the 'real world' and 'world of myth and symbol.' Objects, sensations, hit w...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Any belief in Creators or Purpose is wishful thinking. And when you point out that perhaps ALL think...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
In my writing I am acting as a map maker, an explorer of psychic areas . . . a cosmonaut of inner sp...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
My purpose in writing has always been to express human potentials and purposes relevant to the Space...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Love? What is it? Most natural painkiller. What there is . . . LOVE.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
I feel that any form of so called psychotherapy is strongly contraindicated for addicts. The questio...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
A junky runs on junk time. When his junk is cut off, the clock runs down and stops. All he can do is...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
We are setting out to create new worlds, new beings, new modes of consciousness.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Nothing is true, everything is permitted
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Sometimes paranoia's just having all the facts.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Hemingway was a prisoner of his style. No one can talk like the characters in Hemingway except the c...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
You can't fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Thanks, for a country where nobody is allowed to mind his own business. Thanks, for a nation of fink...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
The dogma of science is that the will cannot possibly affect external forces, and I think that's jus...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Nothing exists until or unless it is observed. An artist is making something exist by observing it. ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Hustlers of the world, there is one Mark you cannot beat: the Mark Inside.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
I began to get a feeling (...) of being the only sane man in a nut house. It doesn't make you feel s...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
The boy looks into Mugwump eyes blank as obsidian mirrors, pools of black blood, glory holes in a to...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Some people like neat suburbs. I always am attracted to the rundown and the old and the offbeat.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Scientology is a model control system, a state in fact with its own courts, police, rewards and pena...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Is Control controlled by its need to control? Answer: yes.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Most of the trouble in this world has been caused by folks who can't mind their own business, be...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Nobody's busting into YOUR apartment at three in the morning, are they? Well, then don't worry about...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Out of the closets and into the museums, libraries, architectural monuments, concert halls, bookstor...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
To be an outlaw you must first have a base in law to reject and get out of, I never had such a base....
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
They are all stupid peasants, and the worst of all peasants are the so-called educated. These people...
WILLIAM S BURROUGHS
Junk turns the user into a plant. Plants do not feel pain since pain has no function in a stationary...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
All over America, people were pulling credentials out of their pockets and sticking them under someo...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
I started to write in about 1950; I was thirty-five at the time; there didn't seem to be any str...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
That old feeling is still in my leaking heart.
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, wo...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
For the last four years of her life, Mother was in a nursing home called Chateins in St. Louis ... [...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Build a good name. Keep your name clean. Don’t make compromises, don’t worry about making a bunc...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
You need a good bedside manner with doctors or you will get nowhere.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
May 4, 1985. I am packing for a short trip to New York to discuss the cat book with Brion. In the fr...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
In the beginning his flesh was simply soft, so soft that he was cut to the bone by dust particles, a...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
After 1957 On The Road sold a trillion levis and a million espresso coffee machines, and also sent c...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Exterminate all rational thought
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
O death where is thy sting? The man is never on time...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
If I had my way we'd sleep every night all wrapped around each other like hibernating rattlesnakes.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
The aim of education is the knowledge, not the facts, but of values.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Did I ever tell you about the man
who taught his asshole to talk?

His whole abdomen ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Hip - Someone who knows the score. Someone who understands "jive talk." Someone who is "with it." Th...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Hemingway said:
'It don't come anymore.'
So where did it go?
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS