Quotes from William S. Burroughs

Nobody owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death.

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

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

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

In deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative.

The cat does not offer services. The cat offers itself. Of course he wants care and shelter. You don't buy love for nothing. Like all pure creatures, cats are practical.

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

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

Like all pure creatures, cats are practical.

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.

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.

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

After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say I want to see the manager.

Anything that can be done chemically can be done by other means.

Black magic operates most effectively in preconscious, marginal areas. Casual curses are the most effective.

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

Humility is indeed beatness, a compulsory virtue that no one exhibits unless he has to.

Paranoia means having all the facts.

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