William S. Burroughs

It is indeed difficult to make a living as a writer, and my advice to anyone contemplating a literary career is to have some other trade.

No body of knowledge needs an organizational policy. Organizational policy can only impede the advancement of knowledge. There is a basic incompatibility between any organization and freedom of thought.

Some people like neat suburbs. I always am attracted to the rundown and the old and the offbeat.

Most serious writers refuse to make themselves available to the things that technology is doing. I've never been able to understand this sort of fear.

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

I am getting so far out one day I won't come back at all.

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

Which came first the intestine or the tapeworm?

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

This is a war universe. War all the time. That is its nature. There may be other universes based on all sorts of other principles, but ours seems to be based on war and games.

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

How I hate those who are dedicated to producing conformity.

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.

I see no reason why the artistic world can't absolutely merge with Madison Avenue. Pop art is a move in that direction. Why can't we have advertisements with beautiful words and beautiful images?

Scientology is a model control system, a state in fact with its own courts, police, rewards and penalties.

Hemingway was a prisoner of his style. No one can talk like the characters in Hemingway except the characters in Hemingway. His style in the wildest sense finally killed him.

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

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

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

If everyone is to be made responsible for everything they do, you must extend responsibility beyond the level of conscious intention.