Quotes By William S. Burroughs

The only possible ethic is to do what one wants to do.

Nothing is true, everything is permitted.

In deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality.

Happiness is a byproduct of function, purpose, and conflict; those who seek happiness for itself seek victory without war.

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

The way to kill a man or a nation is to cut off his dreams, the way the whites are taking care of the Indians: killing their dreams, their magic, their familiar spirits.

Hustlers of the world, there is one mark you cannot beat: the mark inside.

A functioning police state needs no police.

Every man has inside himself a parasitic being who is acting not at all to his advantage.

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

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.

A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on.

Junk is the ideal product... the ultimate merchandise. No sales talk necessary. The client will crawl through a sewer and beg to buy.

Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing.

Which came first the intestine or the tapeworm?

The aim of education is the knowledge not of facts but of values.

After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say 'I want to see the manager.'

Language is a virus from outer space.

Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative.

You can't fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.

After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it. I sure as hell wouldn't want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military.

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

How I hate those who are dedicated to producing conformity.

A cat's rage is beautiful, burning with pure cat flame, all its hair standing up and crackling blue sparks, eyes blazing and sputtering.

Smash the control images. Smash the control machine.

Black magic operates most effectively in preconscious, marginal areas. Casual curses are the most effective.

Admittedly, a homosexual can be conditioned to react sexually to a woman, or to an old boot for that matter. In fact, both homo - and heterosexual experimental subjects have been conditioned to react sexually to an old boot, and you can save a lot of money that way.

In my writing I am acting as a map maker, an explorer of psychic areas, a cosmonaut of inner space, and I see no point in exploring areas that have already been thoroughly surveyed.

The cat does not offer services. The cat offers itself. Of course he wants care and shelter. You don't buy love for nothing.

The face of evil is always the face of total need.