William Burroughs Quotes

A functioning police state needs no police.

Which came first the intestine or the tapeworm?

There is the pleasurable orgasm, like a rising sales graph, and there is the unpleasurable orgasm, slumping ominously like the Dow Jones in 1929.

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.

In deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality.

Kerouac opened a million coffee bars and sold a million pairs of Levis to both sexes. Woodstock rises from his pages.

Truth is used to vitalize a statement rather than devitalize it. Truth implies more than a simple statement of fact. "I don't have any whisky," may be a fact but it is not a truth.

Virtue is simply happiness, and happiness is a by-product of function. You are happy when you are functioning.

So 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.

After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say "I WANT TO SEE THE MANAGER."