Denise > Denise's Quotes

“Panic is the sudden realization that everything around you is alive.”
― William S. Burroughs, Ghost of Chance

“A cat's rage is beautiful, burning with pure cat flame, all its hair standing up and crackling blue sparks, eyes blazing and sputtering.”
― William S. Burroughs, The Cat Inside

“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.”
― William S. Burroughs

“I bear my burden proudly for all to see, to conquer prejudice and ignorance and hate with knowledge and sincerity and love. Whenever you are threatened by a hostile presence, you emit a thick cloud of love like an octopus squirts out ink...”
― William S. Burroughs

“Like all pure creatures, cats are practical.”
― William S. Burroughs, The Cat Inside

“In homosexual sex you know exactly what the other person is feeling, so you are identifying with the other person completely. In heterosexual sex you have no idea what the other person is feeling.”
― William S. Burroughs

“As a young child I wanted to be a writer because writers were rich and famous. They lounged around Singapore and Rangoon smoking opium in a yellow pongee silk suit. They sniffed cocaine in Mayfair and they penetrated forbidden swamps with a faithful native boy and lived in the native quarter of Tangier smoking hashish and languidly caressing a pet gazelle.”
― William S. Burroughs, The Adding Machine: Selected Essays

“Junk turns the user into a plant. Plants do not feel pain since pain has no function in a stationary organism. Junk is a pain killer. A plant has no libido in the human or animal sense. Junk replaces the sex drive. Seeding is the sex of the plant and the function of opium is to delay seeding.
Perhaps the intense discomfort of withdrawal is the transition from plant back to animal, from a painless, sexless, timeless state back to sex and pain and time, from death back to life.”
― William S. Burroughs, Junky

“It's the little touches that make a future solid enough to destroy.”
― William S. Burroughs

“It is to be remembered that all art is magical in origin - music,
sculpture, writing, painting - and by magical I mean intended to
produce very definite results. Paintings were originally formulae
to make what is painted happen. Art is not an end in itself, any
more than Einstein's matter-into-energy formulae is an end in itself.
Like all formulae, art was originally FUNCTIONAL, intended to make
things happen, the way an atom bomb happens from Einstein's
formulae.”
― William S. Burroughs

“If, after spending time with a person, you feel as though you've lost a quart of plasma, avoid that person in the future.”
― William S. Burroughs

“America is not a young land: it is old and dirty and evil. Before the settlers, before the Indians... the evil was there... waiting.”
― William S. Burroughs

“There is only one thing a writer can write about: what is in front of his senses at the moment of writing... I am a recording instrument... I do not presume to impose “story” “plot” “continuity”... Insofar as I succeed in Direct recording of certain areas of psychic process I may have limited function... I am not an entertainer...”
― William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch: The Restored Text

“It is not the intensity but the duration of pain that breaks the will to resist.”
― William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch: The Restored Text

“Jesus Christ said 'by their fruits ye shall know them,' not by their disclaimers.”
― William S. Burroughs

“what a horrible loutish planet this is. the dominant species consists of sadistic morons, faces bearing the hideous lineaments of spiritual famine swollen with stupid hate. hopeless rubbish.”
― William S. Burroughs, My Education: A Book of Dreams

“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.”
― William S. Burroughs

“Evidence indicates that cats were first tamed in Egypt. The Egyptians stored grain, which attracted rodents, which attracted cats. (No evidence that such a thing happened with the Mayans, though a number of wild cats are native to the area.) I don't think this is accurate. It is certainly not the whole story. Cats didn't start as mousers. Weasels and snakes and dogs are more efficient as rodent-control agents. I postulate that cats started as psychic companions, as Familiars, and have never deviated from this function.”
― William S. Burroughs, The Cat Inside

“The face of "evil" is always the face of total need. A dope fiend is a man in total need of dope. Beyond a certain frequency need knows absolutely no limit or control. In the words of total need: "Wouldn't you?" Yes you would. You would lie, cheat, inform on your friends, steal, do anything to satisfy total need. Because you would be in a state of total sickness, total possession, and not in a position to act in any other way. Dope fiends are sick people who cannot act other than they do. A rabid dog cannot choose but bite.”
― William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch: The Restored Text

“I prefer cats to people, for the most part. Most people aren't cute,
& if they are cute they rapidly outgrow it”
― William S. Burroughs

“He remembers his fathers last words: “Stay out of churches, son. All they got a key to is the shit house. And swear to me you’ll never wear a lawman’s badge.”
― William S. Burroughs, The Place of Dead Roads

“Tell Allen I plead guilty to vampirism and other crimes against life. But I love him and nothing else cancels love.
”
― William Burroughs

“A junkie spends half his life waiting.”
― William S. Burroughs, Junky

“I do spend a great deal of time alone. I'm not very gregarious. I don't like parties and miscellaneous gatherings with no particular purpose. I think parties are largely a mistake. The bigger they are the more mistaken they are.”
― William S. Burroughs, With William Burroughs: A Report From The Bunker

“Wouldn't it be great,as Scott Peck suggests, if all medical students had to undergo the symptoms and feeling of a spectrum of illnesses. From acute infections to terminal cancer - and Kuru, the laughing sickness. Just a month for each exposure, controlled of course, and a good heavy dose of excruciating pain. So they'll know what that feels like.”
― William S. Burroughs, Last Words: The Final Journals

“All political movements are basically anti-creative — since a political movement is a form of war. “There’s no place for impractical dreamers around here,” that’s what they always say. “Your writing activities will be directed, kindly stop horsing around.” “As for the smoking of marijuana, it is the exploitation for the workers.” Both favor alcohol and are against pot.”
― William S. Burroughs

“Most people don't notice what's going on around them. That's my principal message to writers: for God's sake, keep your eyes open.”
― William S. Burroughs, With William Burroughs: A Report From The Bunker

“They say only love can create, so who the fuck could love up a centipede? He's got more love in him than I got.
Now, killing a centipede makes me feel safer - like, one less.”
― William S. Burroughs, Last Words: The Final Journals

“I don't know what falling in love for me is. The concept of romantic love arose in the Middle Ages. Now remember, the Arabs don't even have a word for love—that is, a word for love apart from physical attraction or sex. And this separation of love and sex is a western concept, a Christian concept. As to what falling in love means, I'm uncertain. Love, well, it means simply physical attraction and liking a person at the same time.”
― William S. Burroughs, With William Burroughs: A Report From The Bunker

“Did any of you ever see Doctor Tetrazzini perform? I say perform advisedly because his operations were performances. He would start by throwing a scalpel across the room into the patient and then make his entrance as a ballet dancer. His speed was incredible: "I don't give them time to die", he would say. Tumors put him in a frenzy of rage. "Fucking undisciplined cells!" he would snarl, advancing on the tumor like a knife-fighter.”
― William Burroughs, Naked Lunch: The Restored Text