More Quotes by William S. Burroughs
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.
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.
After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say 'I want to see the manager.
Open your mind and let the pictures out
in the magical universe there are no coincidences and there are no accidents. nothing happens unless someone wills it to happen
The simplest questions are the most difficult.
Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing.
If you weren't surprised by your life you wouldn't be alive. Life is surprise.
One very important aspect of art is that it makes people aware of what they know and don’t know they know... Once the breakthrough is made, there is a permanent expansion of awareness. But there is always a reaction of rage, of outrage, at the first breakthrough... So the artist, then, expands awareness. And once the breakthrough is made, this becomes part of the general awareness.
How long does it take man to realize that he cannot want what he wants? You have to live in hell to see heaven.
