Top 15 William S. Burroughs Quotes

Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing.

Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape.

You were not there for the beginning. You will not be there for the end. Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative

When you stop growing you start dying.

The question is frequently asked: Why does a man become a drug addict?
The answer is that he usually does not intend to become an addict. You don’t wake up one morning and decide to be a drug addict. It takes at least three months’ shooting twice a day to get any habit at all. And you don’t really know what junk sickness is until you have had several habits. It took me almost six months to get my first habit, and then the withdrawal symptoms were mild. I think it no exaggeration to say it takes about a year and several hundred injections to make an addict.
The questions, of course, could be asked: Why did you ever try narcotics? Why did you continue using it long enough to become an addict? You become a narcotics addict because you do not have strong motivations in the other direction. Junk wins by default. I tried it as a matter of curiosity. I drifted along taking shots when I could score. I ended up hooked. Most addicts I have talked to report a similar experience. They did not start using drugs for any reason they can remember. They just drifted along until they got hooked. If you have never been addicted, you can have no clear idea what it means to need junk with the addict’s special need. You don’t decide to be an addict. One morning you wake up sick and you’re an addict. (Junky, Prologue, p. xxxviii)

You know a real friend?
Someone you know will look after your cat after you are gone.

There is nothing more provocative than minding your own business.

After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say 'I want to see the manager.

Love? What is it? Most natural painkiller what there is.

The junk merchant doesn't sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to his product. He does not improve and simplify his merchandise. He degrades and simplifies the client.

Panic is the sudden realization that everything around you is alive.

There are no innocent bystanders ... what are they doing there in the first place?

Smash the control images. Smash the control machine.

Nothing exists until or unless it is observed. An artist is making something exist by observing it. And his hope for other people is that they will also make it exist by observing it. I call it 'creative observation.' Creative viewing.

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