In deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality.
Wisdom
AUTHOR QUOTES
Quotes by William S. Burroughs
Explore 25 sourced quotes by William S. Burroughs. Discover famous, inspirational and timeless words with source information.
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Selected quotes by William S. Burroughs
The aim of education is the knowledge, not of facts, but of values.
Education
Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer.
Education
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?
Life
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.
Wisdom
Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape.
Hope
Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact.
Wisdom
You can't fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.
Wisdom
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.
Wisdom
Sometimes paranoia's just having all the facts.
Wisdom
You must learn to exist with no religion, no country, no allies. You must learn to live alone in silence.
Education
A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on.
Wisdom
Happiness is a byproduct of function, purpose, and conflict; those who seek happiness for itself seek victory without war.
Happiness
The cat does not offer services. The cat offers itself. Of course he wants care and shelter. You don't buy love for nothing.
Love
After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say 'I want to see the manager.'
Wisdom
Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing.
Wisdom
Nothing is true, everything is permitted.
Wisdom
In the U.S., you have to be a deviant or die of boredom.
Wisdom
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.
Wisdom
My relationships with my cats has saved me from a deadly, pervasive ignorance.
Wisdom
Like all pure creatures, cats are practical.
Wisdom
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.
Wisdom
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.
Wisdom
Our national drug is alcohol. We tend to regard the use any other drug with special horror.
Wisdom
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