In deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality.
AUTHOR QUOTES
Quotes by William S. Burroughs
Explore 25 verified and sourced quotes attributed to William S. Burroughs. Open any quote for its dedicated page, source details and related topics.
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Selected quotes by William S. Burroughs
The aim of education is the knowledge, not of facts, but of values.
Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer.
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?
Visual art and writing don't exist on an aesthetic hierarchy that positions one above the other, because each is capable of things the other can't do at all. Sometimes one picture is equal to 30 pages of discourse, just as there are things images are completely incapable of communicating.
Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape.
Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact.
You can't fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.
Changes... can only be effected by alterations in the original. The only thing not prerecorded in a prerecorded universe are the prerecordings themselves. The copies can only repeat themselves word for word. A virus is a copy. You can pretty it up, cut it up, scramble it - it will reassemble in the same form.
Sometimes paranoia's just having all the facts.
You must learn to exist with no religion, no country, no allies. You must learn to live alone in silence.
A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on.
Happiness is a byproduct of function, purpose, and conflict; those who seek happiness for itself seek victory without war.
The cat does not offer services. The cat offers itself. Of course he wants care and shelter. You don't buy love for nothing.
After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say 'I want to see the manager.'
Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing.
Nothing is true, everything is permitted.
In the U.S., you have to be a deviant or die of boredom.
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.
My relationships with my cats has saved me from a deadly, pervasive ignorance.
Like all pure creatures, cats are practical.
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.
Speaking for myself, art differs from writing in that I never know what I'm going to paint until I paint it, so it's almost like automatic writing. A writer, on the other hand, can't help but know what he's going to write, because the activity demands a degree of premeditation.
Our national drug is alcohol. We tend to regard the use any other drug with special horror.
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