Do not proffer sympathy to the mentally ill; it is a bottomless pit. Tell them firmly, “I am not paid to listen to this drivel – you are a terminal fool!” Otherwise, they make you as crazy as they are.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHSOnce the law starts asking questions, there’s no stopping them.
More William S. Burroughs Quotes
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I began to get a feeling familiar to me from my bartending days of being the only sane man in a nuthouse. It doesn’t make you feel superior but depressed and scared, because there is nobody you can contact.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS -
You can’t fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS -
The face of evil is always the face of total need.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS -
Life is a vacation from two eternities.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS -
Thanks, for a country where nobody is allowed to mind his own business. Thanks, for a nation of finks.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS -
Black magic operates most effectively in preconscious, marginal areas. Casual curses are the most effective.
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 -
Hustlers of the world, there is one mark you cannot beat: the mark inside.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS -
Paranoia is just having the right information.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS -
How long does it take man to realize that he cannot want what he wants? You have to live in hell to see heaven.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS -
The cat does not offer services. The cat offers itself.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS -
Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS -
He who has learned to do nothing with his whole mind and body will have everything done for him.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS -
There isn’t a feeling you can get on drugs that you can’t get without drugs.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS -
What does the money machine eat? It eats youth, spontaneity, life, beauty, and, above all, it eats creativity. It eats quality and sh*ts quantity.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS -
(1) Never give anything away for nothing. (2) Never give more than you have to give (always catch the buyer hungry and always make him wait). (3) Always take everything back if you possibly can.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS -
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 -
Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS -
How I hate those who are dedicated to producing conformity.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS -
Panic is the sudden realization that everything around you is alive.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS -
I prefer cats to people, for the most part. Most people aren’t cute at all, and if they are cute they very rapidly outgrow it.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS -
After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn’t do it.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS -
The simplest questions are the most difficult.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS -
The world is now a virus.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS -
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 -
By the flaws in the picture the truth will emerge.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS