STEVILon > STEVILon's Quotes

“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“I am not one of those weak-spirited, sappy Americans who want to be liked by all the people around them. I don’t care if people hate my guts; I assume most of them do. The important question is whether they are in a position to do anything about it. My affections, being concentrated over a few people, are not spread all over Hell in a vile attempt to placate sulky, worthless shits.”
― William S. Burroughs

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

“A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on. ”
― William S. Burroughs

“Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing.”
― William S. Burroughs, The Job: Interviews with William S. Burroughs

“A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on. A psychotic is a guy who's just found out what's going on.”
― William S. Burroughs

“Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer.”
― William S. Burroughs

“You were not there for the beginning. You will not be there for the end. Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative”
― William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch: The Restored Text

“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”
― William S. Burroughs

“Love is a haunting melody that I have never mastered, and I fear I never will.”
― William S. Burroughs

“In the U.S. you have to be a deviant or die of boredom.”
― William Burroughs

“When you stop growing you start dying.”
― William S. Burroughs, Junky

“There is nothing more provocative than minding your own business.”
― William S. Burroughs, The Place of Dead Roads

“After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say 'I want to see the manager.”
― William S. Burroughs, The Adding Machine: Selected Essays

“You know a real friend?
Someone you know will look after your cat after you are gone.”
― William S. Burroughs, Last Words: The Final Journals

“Never do business with a religious son-of-a-bitch. His word ain't worth a shit -- not with the Good Lord telling him how to fuck you on the deal.”
― William S. Burroughs

“Love? What is it? Most natural painkiller what there is.”
― William S. Burroughs, Last Words: The Final Journals

“Language is a virus from outer space”
― William S. Burroughs

“Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact. ”
― William S. Burroughs

“Writers, like elephants, have long, vicious memories. There are things I wish I could forget.”
― William S. Burroughs

“I am getting so far out one day I won't come back at all.”
― William S. Burroughs

“Every man has inside himself a parasitic being who is acting not at all to his advantage.”
― William S. Burroughs

“Smash the control images. Smash the control machine.”
― William S. Burroughs, Dead City Radio

“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.”
― William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch: The Restored Text

“we are all alone, born alone, die alone, and — in spite of true romance magazines — we shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way. i do not say lonely — at least, not all the time — but essentially, and finally, alone. this is what makes your self-respect so important, and i don’t see how you can respect yourself if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness”
― William S. Burroughs

“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

“Knowing you might not make it... in that knowledge courage is born.”
― William S. Burroughs, The Western Lands

“The best way to keep something bad from happening is to see it ahead of time... and you can't see it if you refuse to face the possibility.”
― William S. Burroughs

“There couldn't be a society of people who didn't dream. They'd be dead in two weeks.”
― William S. Burroughs

“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