20 William Burroughs Quotes

“A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what’s going on. A psychotic is a guy who’s just found out what’s going on.”

“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.”

“Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing.”

“Whether you sniff it smoke it eat it or shove it up your ass the result is the same: addiction.”

“Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape. ”

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

“If I had my way we’d sleep every night all wrapped around each other like hibernating rattlesnakes.”

“You were not there for the beginning. You will not be there for the end. Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative”

“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”

“In the U.S. you have to be a deviant or die of boredom.”

“When you stop growing you start dying.”

“There is nothing more provocative than minding your own business.”

“Love? What is it? Most natural painkiller what there is.”

“Language is a virus from outer space”

“Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact. ”

“Every man has inside himself a parasitic being who is acting not at all to his advantage.”

“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.”

“The face of ‘evil’ is always the face of total need.”

“There couldn’t be a society of people who didn’t dream. They’d be dead in two weeks.”

“How I hate those who are dedicated to producing conformity.”

Books by Burroughs