More Quotes by William S. Burroughs
Do not proffer sympathy to the mentally ill; it is a bottomless pit. Tell them firmly, "I am not paid to listen to this drivel - you are a terminal fool!" Otherwise, they make you as crazy as they are.
In the magical universe there are no coincidences and there are no accidents. Nothing happens unless someone wills it to happen. The dogma of science is that the will cannot possibly affect external forces, and I think that’s just ridiculous. It’s as bad as the church. My viewpoint is the exact contrary of the scientific viewpoint. I believe that if you run into somebody in the street it’s for a reason.
Every word is autobiographical, and every word is fiction.
How long does it take man to realize that he cannot want what he wants? You have to live in hell to see heaven.
Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape.
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.
A consumer society is about simplfying and degrading the consumer as well as the product.
The best way to keep something bad from happening is to see it ahead of time... and you can't see it if you refuse to face the possibility.
When you cut into the present the future leaks out.
It is to be remembered that all art is magical in origin - music, sculpture, writing, painting - and by magical I mean intended to produce very definite results. Paintings were originally formulae to make what is painted happen. Art is not an end in itself, any more than Einstein's matter-into-energy formulae is an end in itself. Like all formulae, art was originally FUNCTIONAL, intended to make things happen, the way an atom bomb happens from Einstein's formulae.
