Quotes from William S. Burroughs

This is a war universe. War all the time. That is its nature. There may be other universes based on all sorts of other principles, but ours seems to be based on war and games.

Perhaps all pleasure is only relief.

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

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.

The photo collage is a way to travel that must be used with skill and precision if we are to arrive... The collage as a flexible hieroglyph language of juxtaposition: A collage makes a statement.

You were given the power to love in order to use it, no matter what pain it may cause you.

Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing.

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

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

If everyone is to be made responsible for everything they do, you must extend responsibility beyond the level of conscious intention.

When all lies, deceit, pretense is stripped away, what remains? The truth of a painting, or a book or a man.

Nothing is true, everything is permitted.

Tell the truth once and for all and shut up forever.

By the flaws in the picture the truth will emerge.

Tell Allen I plead guilty to vampirism and other crimes against life. But I love him and nothing else cancels love.

Why are we here? We're here to go!

After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it.

No atomic physicist has to worry, people will always want to kill other people on a mass scale. Sure, he's got the fridge full of sausages and spring water.

Smash the control images. Smash the control machine.

Be just and if you can't be just, be arbitrary.

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

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.

In Mexico your wishes have a dream power. When you want to see someone, he turns up.

Sometimes paranoia's just having all the facts.