Quotes from William Seward Burroughs

A functioning police state needs no police.

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

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. All games are basically hostile. Winners and losers. We see them all around us: the winners and the losers. The losers can oftentimes become winners, and the winners can very easily become losers.

Cheat your landlord if you can and must, but do not try to shortchange the Muse. It cannot be done. You can't fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.

1. Never give anything away for nothing. 2. Never give more than you have to (always catch the buyer hungry and always make him wait). 3. Always take back everything if you possibly can.

You see control can never be a means to any practical end. Control can never be a means to anything but more control like Junk.

There is simply no room left for 'freedom from the tyranny of government' since city dwellers depend on it for food, power, water, transportation, protection, and welfare. Your right to live where you want, with companions of your choosing, under laws to which you agree, died in the eighteenth century with Captain Mission. Only a miracle or a disaster could restore it.

Faced by the actual practice of freedom, the French and American revolutions would be forced to stand by their words.

Hustlers of the world, there is one Mark you cannot beat: The Mark Inside.

Communication must become total and conscious before we can stop it.

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 is only one thing a writer can write about: what is in front of his senses at the moment of writing.

The title means exactly what the words say: NAKED Lunch—a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork.

Junk is the ultimate merchandise. The junk merchant does not sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to the product. He does not improve and simplify his merchandise, he degrades and simplifies the client.

So cheat your landlord if you can and must, but do not try to shortchange the Muse. It cannot be done. You can't fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.