William S. Burroughs: Trending quotes

“Faced by the actual practice of freedom, the French and American revolutions would be forced to stand by their words.”

Queer: A Novel (1985)

William S. Burroughs book Cities of the Red Night

Cities of the Red Night (1981)

“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”

“Concession is another control bind. History shows that once a government starts to make concessions it is on a one-way street.”

Atrophied Preface
Naked Lunch (1959)

William S. Burroughs book The Adding Machine: Collected Essays

"The Limits of Control"
The Adding Machine: Collected Essays (1985)

“Youth rebellion is a world wide phenomenon that has not been seen before in history. I don't believe they will calm down and be ad execs at thirty as the establishment would like to believe. Millions of young people all over the world are fed up with shallow unworthy authority running on a platform of bullshit.”

“When you stop growing you start dying.”

"The Coming of the Purple Better One"
Exterminator! A Novel (1971)

“The American uppermiddle-class citizen is a composite of negatives. He is largely delineated by what he is not.”

Prologue
Junkie (1953)

“If you wish to alter or annihilate a pyramid of numbers in a serial relation, you alter or remove the bottom number. If we wish to annihilate the junk pyramid, we must start with the bottom of the pyramid: the Addict in the Street, and stop tilting quixotically for the "higher ups" so called, all of whom are immediately replaceable. The addict in the street who must have junk to live is the one irreplaceable factor in the junk equation. When there are no more addicts to buy junk there will be no junk traffic. As long as junk need exists, someone will service it.”

Junkie (1953)

“Coke is pure kick. It lifts you straight up, a mechanical lift that starts leaving you as soon as you feel it”

Introduction
Naked Lunch (1959)

“All modern systems are riddled with contradictions.”

Junkie (1953)

William S. Burroughs book The Adding Machine: Collected Essays

"The Limits of Control"
The Adding Machine: Collected Essays (1985)

“Senators leap up and bray for the Death Penalty with inflexible authority of virus yen… Death for dope fiends, death for sex queens (I mean friends) death for the psychopath who offends the cowed and graceless flesh with broken animal innocence of lithe movements. The black wind of death undulates over the land, feeling, smelling for the crime of separate life, movers of the fear-frozen flesh shivering under a vast probability curve… Populations blocks disappear in a checker game of genocide… Any number can play…”

“Our national drug is alcohol. We tend to regard the use of any other drug with special horror.”

Atrophied Preface
Naked Lunch (1959)

“I can say definitely that weed is an aphrodisiac and that sex is more enjoyable under the influence of weed than without it. Anyone who has used good weed will verify this statement.”

From "Deposition: Testimony Concerning a Sickness", p. 201
Naked Lunch (1959)

“After teaching a class in Creative Writing a few years back, my own creative powers fell to an all0time low. I really had a case of writer's block, and my idealistic young assistant complained that I simply sat around the loft doing absolutely nothing-which was absolutely true. This gave me time to think (as the French say): Can creative writing be taught?”

Junkie (1953)

William S. Burroughs book The Adding Machine: Collected Essays

"A Word to the Wise Guy"
The Adding Machine: Collected Essays (1985)

“Rock and Roll adolescent hoodlums storm the streets of all nations. They rush into the Louvre and throw acid in the Mona Lisa’s face.”

“Well as, one judge said to the other, 'Be just and if you can't be just be arbitrary.' Regret cannot observe customary obscenities.”

Benway
Naked Lunch (1959)

“Remember the Italian steward who put on women's clothes and so filched a seat in a lifeboat? "A cur in human shape, certainly he was born and saved to set a new standard by which to judge infamy and shame.”

From the chapter entitled "And Start West," p. 5
From the chapter entitled "Lazarus Go Home," p. 62
Naked Lunch (1959)

William S. Burroughs book The Western Lands

Source: The Western Lands (1987), p. 6

“Stupid people can learn a language quiet and easy because there is nothing going on in there to keep it out.”

“A paranoid man is a man who knows a little about what's going on.”

Two Years Later: Mexico City Return
Queer: A Novel (1985)