You know the experiment with rats where they are subject to this electric shock and dropped in cold water if they so much as move at a female. So they all become fruit rats and that’s the way it is with the etiology. And shall such a rat squeak out, ‘I’m queah and I luuuuuuuuve it’...

— William S. Burroughs

William S. Burroughs Quotes

And all that I was before is out there in the darkness looking for me.

— William S. Burroughs

It is simply that I divide people into those who matter and those who do not, and I have no concern with quantitative criteria.

— William S. Burroughs

Don Juan says anyone who always looks like the same person isn’t a person. He is a person impersonator.

— William S. Burroughs

Do not be in a hurry to dispose of old enemies. What would you do without them?

— William S. Burroughs

I remembered a long time ago when I lay in bed beside my mother, watching lights from the street move across the ceiling and down the walls. I felt the sharp nostalgia of train whistles, piano music down a city street, burning leaves. A mild degree of junk sickness always brought me the magic of childhood.

— William S. Burroughs

Life is a school where every pupil must learn a different lesson.

— William S. Burroughs

El trabajo manual hace pasar las horas de prisa.

— William S. Burroughs

Lee did not enjoy frustration. The limitations of his desires were like the bars of a cage, like a chain and collar, something that he had learned as an animal learns, through days and years of experiencing the snub of the chain, the unyielding bars. He had never resigned himself, and his eyes looked out through invisible bars, watchful, alert, waiting for the keeper to forget the door, for the frayed collar, the loosened bar... suffering without despair and without consent.

— William S. Burroughs

Kid, it was tasty.

— William S. Burroughs

You think I am innarested to hear about your horrible old condition? I am not innarested at all.

— William S. Burroughs

An oil lamp lit a woman’s body. Lee could feel desire for the woman through the other’s body. ‘I’m not queer,’ he thought. ‘I’m disembodied.

— William S. Burroughs

But the enemy needs bodies to get around.

— William S. Burroughs

Kafka speaks of the point of no return. This is the most difficult of all points to reach. The game is called Find Your Adversary. The Adversary’s game plan is to persuade you that he does not exist. “Why all the paranoia?” This is only one of his game plans. You find out he exists, and you are still a long way from confrontation, a long way. A dreary abrasive dull way, sad voices, dirtier, older.

— William S. Burroughs

There are other tricks: the use of generalities like “the man in the street” and the editorial “we” to establish a rapport of disapproval with the reader and at the same time to create a mental lacuna under cover of an insubstantial and unspecified “we.” And the technique of the misunderstood word: pack a review with obscure words that send the reader to a dictionary. Soon the reader will feel a vague, slightly queasy revulsion for whatever is under discussion.

— William S. Burroughs

The Hindus teach that the Heaven World is more dangerous for the soul than the Hell World, since it is more deceptive and conduces to the fatal error of overconfidence and assumption of immunity. Like a fighter the soul must be constantly in training lest it grow soft on an ephemeral throne. So the splendor of the palace, the constant parades, the state barges, the gold and lapis lazuli, the chariots and bowmen, eat away one’s awareness of the ultimate reality of conflict...

— William S. Burroughs

Now when dealing with an adversary the strategy is to inveigle him or her into your territory. Instead of crossing the river, bring the people on the other side to your side, where you know the country and can marshal your allies.

— William S. Burroughs

Musical intelligence. Agent attends a concert and receives his instructions. Information and directives in and out through street singers, musical broadcasts, jukeboxes, records, high school bands, whistling boys, cabaret performers, singing waiters, transistor radios.

— William S. Burroughs

Are there things you would not do for any amount of money? For any consideration? For a young body? The Integrity Coin attests to the bearer’s inaccessibility to any quantitative bribe. The coin certifies that the bearer has definitely refused the Devil’s Bargain.

— William S. Burroughs

You know the experiment with rats where they are subject to this electric shock and dropped in cold water if they so much as move at a female. So they all become fruit rats and that’s the way it is with the etiology. And shall such a rat squeak out, ‘I’m queah and I luuuuuuuuve it’...

— William S. Burroughs

But just wait until your thinking is basically different from the thinking of a boss or a teacher. You will find out that you aren’t supposed to think. Life is an entanglement of lies to hid its basic mechanisms.

— William S. Burroughs
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