William S. Burroughs

William Seward Burroughs

(February 5, 1914 - August 2, 1997) American author, "Intergalactic Space/Time Liberator"

• (To his secretary after a visit from Kurt Cobain )Theres something wrong with that boy he frowns for no reason

• "The dream is a spontaneous happening and therefore dangerous to a control system set up by the non-dreamers."

• "Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact."

• "I'm running out of everything now. Out of veins, out of money."

• "Language is a virus."
  • Variant: "Language is a virus from outer space."
  • Variant: "Language is obviously a virus as it depends on replication."

• "Madness is confusion of levels of fact...Madness is not seeing visions but confusing levels."

• "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."

• "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."

• "Jack Kerouac, on editing Naked Lunch (in disgust): 'Bill, what is all this stuff about young naked boys being hanged in limestone caves?'
  Burroughs: 'No idea. I know I'm some kind of interplanetary agent but I don't think my signals are decoding properly'."

• "Nothing exists until or unless it is observed. An artist is making something exist by observing it. And his hope for other people is that they will also make it exist by observing it. I call it 'creative observation'. Creative viewing."

• "Nothing is true, everything is permitted."
  • (also attributed to Hassan i Sabbah)

• "Our national drug is alcohol. We tend to regard the use any other drug with special horror."

• "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."

• "The junk merchant doesn't 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."

• "There couldn't be a society of people who didn't dream. They'd be dead in two weeks."

• "There is no line between the 'real world' and 'world of myth and symbol.' Objects, sensations, hit with the impact of hallucination."

• "When I become death, death is the seed from which I grow."

• "Words, colors, light, sound, stone, wood, bronze belong to the living artist. They belong to anyone who can use them. Loot the Louvre! ... Steal anything in sight...."

• "General procedure: Read and learn all you can about problem. Look at problem from a point of zero preconception. Devise variations and alternative solutions. Check back to see if your solution has workable advantage over solutions previously arrived at . . . 'To carry the method a step further than solution of purely technical problem where purpose is implicit in the artifact: devising more efficient gun, tool, boat, signal system, medical or interrogation procedure."

• "I awoke from The Sickness at the age of forty-five, calm and sane, and in reasonably good health except for a weakened liver and the look of borrowed flesh common to all who survive The Sickness. . . When I speak of drug addiction I do not refer to keif, marijuana or any preparation of hashish, mescaline, Banisteriopsis caapi, LSD6, Sacred Mushrooms or any other drugs of the hallucinogen group. . . . There is no evidence that the use of any hallucinogen results in physical dependence..."

• "I think all novelists particularly are engaged in the creation of Tulpas. That is exactly what they are doing. Ahh.... they are trying to create characters that have an existence apart from the novel, apart from the page."

• "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."

• "The mark of a basic shit is that he has to be right."

• "Survive, it's the name of the game. Would I give a shit about these people?"

• "No one owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death."

• "Shoot the bitch and write a book. That's what I did."

• "Love! What is it? Most natural painkiller what there is. LOVE"

• "Son,never listen to a priest or a policeman...the only thing they have the key to is the shithouse"