William S. Burroughs Quotes

I knew [Timothy] Leary, but barely knew, didn't really know Jan [Kerouac].

When you get to be my age there are more and more people you have known that you miss. Brion [Gysin], Antony Balch, Ian Summerville are ones I think of right away I was quite close to.

I've listened to and know Allen Ginsberg music and met him a couple of times, but I don't have any strong statements to make.

The Orgasmic Death Gimmick is rather complicated. It could be called the whole birth-death cycle of action, persuading people that birth and death are realities.

Hemingway said: 'It don't come anymore.' So where did it go?

Kerouac and I are not real at all. The only thing about a writer is that he has written, and not his so-called life. 'And we (will) all die and the stars will go out, one after another.

We are setting out to create new worlds, new beings, new modes of consciousness.

To my way of thinking the function of the poet is to make us aware of what we know and don't know we know.

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.

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

I began to get a feeling (...) of being the only sane man in a nut house. It doesn't make you feel superior but depressed and scared, because there is nobody you can contact.

You know a real friend?Someone you know will look after your cat after you are gone.

We are the cats inside. We are the cats who cannot walk alone, and for us there is only one place.

The price an artist pays for doing what he wants is that he has to do it.

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.

Jesus Christ said 'by their fruits ye shall know them, ' not by their disclaimers.

Language is a virus from outer space

The word has not been recognized as a virus because it has achieved a state of stable symbiosis with the host.

We intend to destroy all dogmatic verbal systems.

But you're an artist. You don't believe in decency and honesty and gratitude.

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

As one judge said to another judge: be just. And if you can’t be just, be arbitrary

Poverty, hatred, war, police-criminals, bureaucracy, insanity, all symptoms of The Human Virus.

I prefer cats to people, for the most part. Most people aren't cute, & if they are cute they rapidly outgrow it

Perhaps all pleasure in only relief

Abandon all nations, the planet drifts to random insect doom.

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.

Thinking is not enough. There is no final enough of wisdom, experience - any... thing.