FastSaying

Hemingway said:
'It don't come anymore.'
So where did it go?


William S. Burroughs

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During this period of his life, Burroughs was seeking a physical utopia, a place where he could live...
GREG A. MULLINS Cheshire Puss,' she began, rather timidly, as she did not at all know whether it would like the name...
LEWIS CARROLL After 1957 On The Road sold a trillion levis and a million espresso coffee machines, and also sent c...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS A bad thing happened to you kids, Dad said. But it could have been worse.
So much worse, Mom sa...
GEORGE SAUNDERS Locke sighed.
'So this is winning,' he said.
'It is,' replied Jean.
'It can go fuck ...
SCOTT LYNCH Where
do all the
memories go,
the ones we
hide away
with
lock & AMANDA LOVELACE I still feel haunted,' she said. 'I thought it would go away. I thought if I faced it, it would all ...
JAMES S.A. COREY Where did you go to, if I may ask?' said Thorin to Gandalf as they rode along.
To look ahead,' ...
J.R.R. TOLKIEN I don't love her anymore
So
Why should I walk
Nights
By the tavern
Where I ...
ORHAN VELI KANıK Hemingway is overrated,
Twain is even more lost at sea,
And all truths point to the mouth ...
DAVE MATTHES Dont GiVe UP iF U StIll WaNna TrY*
DonT WIpE YOUR TeARS IF YOU StiLL WANT TO Cry
 DON'T SET...
TRENT REZNOR Everyday people all over the world take advantage of life, they abuse it and dice with it.Life is so...
GARY F EVANS... There's a door."
"Where does it go?"
"It stays where it is, I think.
TERRY PRATCHETT There is a tiger in my room,' said Frances.
'Did he bite you?' said Father.
'No,' said Fra...
RUSSELL HOBAN i took it off.
i did not want to carry it with me anymore.
AVA i took it off.
i did not want to carry it with me anymore.
AVA. Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'
'That depends a good deal on whe...
LEWIS CARROLL Better you than Cameron " McGillicuddy grumbled. "I know where Cameron's been."
Sean snorted.<...
JENNIFER ECHOLS Come to the edge," he said.
"We can't, we're afraid!" they responded.
"Come to the edge," ...
GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE Mr. Bradford," she said. "I'm not going to propose to you."

The twinkle in Mr. Bradford's...
HEATHER DIXON Did you know", Matilda said suddenly, "that the heart of a mouse beats at the rate of six hundred...
ROALD DAHL Dad?" Jesus asked.
"Yes, son?" God replied.
"What came before colors?" Jesus asked.
"...
ANTHONY T. HINCKS You never know how strong you are until being strong is your only choice.
BOB MARLEY Authority doesn't come from a rank.," Kaladin said, fingering the spheres in his pocket.
"Where...
BRANDON SANDERSON I'm ending this.'

'No. Come on. It's not worth it.'

'You are,' he said fiercel...
RAINBOW ROWELL  “So how’d you do it? How did you get to where you aren’t scared all the freaking time?” DANIEL ABRAHAM I wouldn’t put it past you,” Kaldar said. “Or him. Who knows what the hell he might do?”
ILONA ANDREWS Hallo, Pooh,” said Rabbit.
“Hallo, Rabbit,” said Pooh dreamily.
“Did you make that...
A.A. MILNE This is stolen? We're in a stolen jet?"
"Not stolen," said Donegan Bane from the co-pilot's sea...
DEREK LANDY Bathroom, maybe? Which is where I need to go."
"Ooh, me, too," Eve said.
The boys rolled ...
RACHEL CAINE We can't find the cat,
We don't know where she's at,
Oh, where did she go?
Does anyon...
SHEL SILVERSTEIN Let's go," I said.
"Go where?"
"On Lori's date with Parker."
Now he looked at me over...
JENNIFER ECHOLS He sighed, then said, "So basically, you're stalking her."
"I am NOT stalking her." I insisted....
JENNIFER ECHOLS He then kissed her.

It was a very long time before he let her go. When he did, she looked...
EVA IBBOTSON Why do you do up your hair in those tortured plaits, now, Melanie? Why?
Because, she said.
ANGELA CARTER Come on... come on... I am waiting for answer...
...

Silence doesn't make it... bet...
DEYTH BANGER where are we going?' I asked.
'I don't know,' he said. 'just driving.'
'But this road does...
BRET EASTON ELLIS Where are we going?" I asked
"I don't know," he said. "Just driving."
"But this road doesn...
BRET EASTON ELLIS Alice asked the Cheshire Cat, who was sitting in a tree, “What road do I take?”

The c...
LEWIS CARROLL Alice asked the Cheshire Cat who was sitting in a tree "What road do I take?"

The cat ask...
LEWIS CARROLL Do me a favor."

"Don't lick your seat belt?"

Ash's expression was total conf...
SHERRILYN KENYON No sight so sad as that of a naughty child," he began, "especially a naughty little girl. Do you kno...
CHARLOTTE BRONTë There is a plain under a dim sky. It is covered with gentle rolling curves that might remind you of ...
TERRY PRATCHETT Your smile is back.' That's what Dante said.

'Smiles are like that. They come and go.
BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ I lied," I said. ...
"I know it," he said.
"Then do something about it. Do anything, just ...
WILLIAM FAULKNER There comes a point in your life when you realize:
Who matters,
Who never did,
Who wo...
ADAM LINDSAY GORDON But why did she come back and take her card away?" asked Miss Mackintosh. "I told Florence that Miss...
E.F. BENSON You said you were a fairy princess
You said you were a shooting star
You said we'd go to B...
JENNIFER EGAN He never seemed to get tired. Always first up and ready to move on. Never afraid of what lay ahead.
ERIN HUNTER I was sitting in my lab, my hand spread open on the table, while the skull examined my palm.
JIM BUTCHER It's snowing still," said Eeyore gloomily.
"So it is."
"And freezing."
"Is it?"
...
A.A. MILNE What type of wrong thing, did I do?
...

What wrong did I said... and why I am so unl...
DEYTH BANGER If you want a revenge, don't hold it. It poisons you.
Either you just let the grudge go, or mak...
TOBA BETA I'm sorry,' said the shopkeeper. 'I can't understand your ridiculous accent.'
'My accent?'
DEREK LANDY You called me and said you were home and wanted to go out for a pizza."
"I did? What time is it...
CASSANDRA CLARE You don't find interesting stuff because you don't search enough, ... every book has it's own lesson...
DEYTH BANGER Once I spoke the language of the flowers,
Once I understood each word the caterpillar said,
SHEL SILVERSTEIN Listen, we’ll come visit you. Okay? I’ll dress up as William Shakespeare, Lucent as Emily Dickin...
TIM CUMMINGS So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the hour of his departure drew near--

Ah," s...
ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPéRY Didn’t anyone ask you where your parents are?"
"They asked. Especially about my parents."
JUSTINE LARBALESTIER She had blue skin,
And so did he.
He kept it hid
And so did she.
They searched f...
SHEL SILVERSTEIN If I had a soul I sold it
for pretty words
If I had a body I used
it up spurting my e...
ALLEN GINSBERG Come away, come away, Death,
And in sad cypress let me be laid;
Fly away, fly away, breath...
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE Arab children,
Corn ears of the future,
You will break our chains,
Kill the opium in ...
نزار قباني Morning, Bill,' said Lord Tidmouth agreeably.

'Go to hell!' said Bill.

'Right-...
P.G. WODEHOUSE Are you not thirsty?" said the Lion.
"I am dying of thirst," said Jill.
"Then drink," said...
C.S. LEWIS To be in a time of technological change and advancement is an awesome thought indeed as long as it i...
GARY F EVANS... Come she said
Stay she said
Smile she said
Die she said NâZıM HIKMET All right," he said. "Since you ask so nicely."
"I wasn't asking."
"I'm aware of that. The...
RACHEL CAINE The words came out before Harry had quite got his tongue around them.
“Wangoballwime?”
J.K. ROWLING We dont know what were going to go home to, ... If we dont have anything anymore, Im not sure I want...
IAN WILLIAMSON It'a okay to take some break from the crucible steep of stairs that you want to try to achieve, as l...
LAURE96 If it’s history, let it be history.
BEN TOLOSA Life's not perfect. Some loose ends may never get trimmed up and tidied.
HODA KOTB Dangerous as a lightning strike, as lethal as a pair of crisscrossing short swords, William whispere...
GENA SHOWALTER You have been to hell, Ketut?"
He smiled. Of course he's been there.
What's it like in hel...
ELIZABETH GILBERT Cat: Where are you going?
Alice: Which way should I go?
Cat: That depends on where you are...
LEWIS CARROLL Clarence Hurt was driving, and he got lost. “Does anyone know where the Post Office Building is?�...
BRYAN BURROUGH Of course men can’t know you when you’re unclean,’ said Hilda. ‘It says so in the Bible. Tha...
FAY WELDON ..."SORRY."...
Just doesn't cut it anymore!
ANTHONY T. HINCKS - If I tell you, will you let met go?
- You bet, partner. [...]
- You promised!
- Nop...
SCOTT SNYDER She said he looked hot in uniform.

He said she looked hot without clothes.

S...
ANGELA VERDENIUS Harry — I think I've just understood something! I've got to go to the library!”
And she spr...
J.K. ROWLING What did the Faerie that attacked you look like?"
"Super creepy. Ripped jeans, weird tattoos, b...
LESLEY LIVINGSTON I want to go on being a student," I told him. "I want to be a teacher. I'm just a reader," I said. JOHN IRVING It's Sanjit. It's a Hindu name. It means 'invincible.'"
"That's great," Lana said.
"Invinc...
MICHAEL GRANT Cold,” he said, pressing a finger to my pale wrist.
“Not cold so much as underoxygenated,�...
JOHN GREEN Where did you get your tat?”
“Aaron’s shop. You want to get a tat?” he asked, grinning...
BIJOU HUNTER It was great, ... Three other interns and I came

in, and they said 'OK, you're going to ma...
ENRIQUE PENA I think I’ll just go take a shower,” I said.
It wasn’t until Samuel stiffened that I rem...
PATRICIA BRIGGS Lights and darks. And suddenly i was here, where everything seems strange. And I don't know why. Lik...
BRUCE COVILLE Let us go where skins are rainbows
Enhanced by every hue.

Where genders are clouds KAMAND KOJOURI Dont test me,
Second guess me,
Protest me,
You will DISAPEAR!

(East Jes...
GREEN DAY Static in my head,
the reflected sound of everything,
tried to go to where it led,
but i...
ELLIOTT SMITH A dragon for a familiar!" Trom exclaimed.

"That's what I said to her or close to it anywa...
JENNIFER PRIESTER What did you say, Arthur?"
"I said, how the hell did you get here?"
"I was a row of dots f...
DOUGLAS ADAMS The Way It Is

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But i...
WILLIAM STAFFORD What ho!" I said.
"What ho!" said Motty.
"What ho! What ho!"
"What ho! What ho! What ...
P.G. WODEHOUSE Rory: Amy. I'm gonna need a little help here.
Amy: Just stop it!
Rory: Just think it throu...
STEVEN MOFFAT Hemingway changed prose; so did Salinger and Nabokov.
DAVID LIPSKY

More William S. Burroughs

Virtue is simply happiness, and happiness is a by-product of function. You are happy when you are fu...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS A cat's rage is beautiful, burning with pure cat flame, all its hair standing up and crackling b...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Nothing exists until or unless it is observed. An artist is making something exist by observing it. ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS And if you're doing a deal with a religious son of a bitch, get it in writing.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS I am not one of those weak-spirited, sappy Americans who want to be liked by all the people around t...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS You know a real friend?
Someone you know will look after your cat after you are gone.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS America is not so much a nightmare as a non-dream. The American non-dream is precisely a move to wip...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS America is not a young land: it is old and dirty and evil before the settlers, before the Indians. T...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Which came first the intestine or the tapeworm?
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS There couldn't be a society of people who didn't dream. They'd be dead in two weeks.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Kerouac and I are not real at all. The only thing about a writer is that he has written, and not his...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS In my writing I am acting as a map maker, an explorer of psychic areas. . . a cosmonaut of inner spa...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS A functioning police state needs no police.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Writing prejudicial, off-putting reviews is a precise exercise in applied black magic. The reviewer ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS I think the ideal situation for a family is to be completely incestuous.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Humility is indeed beatness, a compulsory virtue that no one exhibits unless he has to.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS The face of evil is always the face of total need.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS I think there are innumerable gods. What we on earth call God is a little tribal God who has made an...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Man is an artifact designed for space travel. He is not designed to remain in his present biologic s...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS I feel that any form of so called psychotherapy is strongly contraindicated for addicts. The questio...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS This is a war universe. War all the time. That is its nature. There may be other universes based on ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS My general theory since 1971 has been that the word is literally a virus, and that it has not been r...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say I want to see the manager.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Black magic operates most effectively in preconscious, marginal areas. Casual curses are the most ef...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Junk is the ideal product... the ultimate merchandise. No sales talk necessary. The client will craw...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Now what sort of man or woman or monster would stroke a centipede I have ever seen? And here is my g...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS The people in power will not disappear voluntarily, giving flowers to the cops just isn't going to w...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they h...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Intelligence and war are games, perhaps the only meaningful games left. If any player becomes too pr...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Most of the trouble in this world has been caused by folks who can't mind their own business, becaus...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS So cheat your landlord if you can and must, but do not try to shortchange the Muse. It cannot be don...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS A psychotic is a guy who's just found out what's going on.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Out of the closets and into the museums, libraries, architectural monuments, concert halls, bookstor...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Nothing exists until or unless it is observed. An artist is making something exist by observing it. ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Anything that can be done chemically can be done by other means.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS No atomic physicist has to worry, people will always want to kill other people on a mass scale. Sure...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS They tend to be suspicious, bristly, paranoid-type people with huge egos they push around like some ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS There is the pleasurable orgasm, like a rising sales graph, and there is the unpleasurable orgasm, s...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Admittedly, a homosexual can be conditioned to react sexually to a woman, or to an old boot for that...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS So cheat your landlord if you can and must, but do not try to shortchange the Muse. It cannot be d...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it. I s...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS America is not a young land: it is old and dirty and evil before the settlers, before the Indians. ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Admittedly, a homosexual can be conditioned to react sexually to a woman, or to an old boot for that...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS You must learn to exist with no religion, no country, no allies. You must learn to live alone in sil...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS An addict never stops growing. Stupider.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Changes... can only be effected by alterations in the original. The only thing not prerecorded in a ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it....
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS The cat does not offer services. The cat offers itself. Of course he wants care and shelter. You don...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Like all pure creatures, cats are practical.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Language is a virus from outer space.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say 'I want to see the manager....
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS The aim of education is the knowledge, not of facts, but of values.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS In deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Our national drug is alcohol. We tend to regard the use any other drug with special horror.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS The purpose of technology is not to confuse the brain but to serve the body.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Love? What is it? Most natural painkiller.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS I am getting so far out one day I won't come back at all.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Happiness is a byproduct of function, purpose, and conflict; those who seek happiness for itself see...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Perhaps all pleasure is only relief.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Nothing is true, everything is permitted.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS In my writing I am acting as a map maker, an explorer of psychic areas, a cosmonaut of inner space, ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS My relationships with my cats has saved me from a deadly, pervasive ignorance.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS You can't fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Nobody owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS If a weaker baboon be attacked by a stronger baboon the weaker baboon will either (a) present his hr...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Squatting on old bones and excrement and rusty iron, in a white blaze of heat, a panorama of naked i...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implemen...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS I see no reason why the artistic world can't absolutely merge with Madison Avenue. Pop art is a ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Gentle reader, the Fountain of Youth is radioactive, and those who imbibe its poisonous heavy waters...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Visual art and writing don't exist on an aesthetic hierarchy that positions one above the other,...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Speaking for myself, art differs from writing in that I never know what I'm going to paint until...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS In the U.S. you have to be a deviant or exist in extreme boredom... Make no mistake, all intellectua...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Junk is the ultimate merchandise. The junk merchant does not sell his product to the consumer, he se...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say "I want to see the manager."
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Whether you sniff it smoke it eat it or shove it up your ass the result is the same: addiction.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Every man has inside himself a parasitic being who is acting not at all to his advantage.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS The Pusher always gets it all back.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say ''I want to see the manager.''
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Whenever anyone reads his words the writer is there. He lives in his readers.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS A cat's rage is beautiful, burning with pure cat flame, all its hair standing up and crackling blue ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Kerouac opened a million coffee bars and sold a million pairs of Levis to both sexes. Woodstock rise...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS If you rap your knuckles against a window jamb or door, if you brush your leg against a bed or desk,...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Truth is used to vitalize a statement rather than devitalize it. Truth implies more than a simple st...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS when I become death. Death is the seed from which I grow.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS No one owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS The way to kill a man or a nation is to cut off his dreams, the way the whites are taking care of th...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS In fact, they recapitulate the story of Christianity word for word, like the inevitable course of so...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS When I say madness I mean what I see in a nut house: beat, resigned, dim, diffuse, nowhere people. N...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS I'm running out of everything now. Out of veins, out of money.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS The exact objectives of Islam Inc. are obscure. Needless to say everyone involved has a different an...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS (1) Never give anything away for nothing. (2) Never give more than you have to give (always catch th...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Never give succor to the mentally ill; it is a bottomless pit.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS It is doubtful if shame can exist in the absence of sexual libido.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Americans have a special horror of giving up control, of letting things happen in their own way with...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS When I become death, death is the seed from which I grow.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS My experience as an addict was very useful to me as writer: the whole syndrome of addiction and with...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS There is no intensity of love or feeling that does not involve the risk of crippling hurt. It is a d...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS The question is frequently asked: Why does a man become a drug addict?
The answer is that he us...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS The first and most important thing an individual can do is to become an individual again, decontrol ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS A Nazi initiation into the upper reaches of the SS was to gouge out the eye of a pet cat after feedi...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Panic is the sudden realization that everything around you is alive.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS When you stop growing you start dying.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS To put it country simple. Earth has a lot of things other folks might want, like the whole planet. A...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS I don’t care if people hate my guts; I assume most of them do. The important question is whether th...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS England has the most sordid literary scene I've ever seen. They all meet in the same pub. This guy's...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS I don’t care if people hate my guts; I assume most of them do. The important question is whether t...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS I think that Richard Nixon will go down in history as a true folk hero, who struck a vital blow to t...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS The cat does not offer services. The cat offers itself. Of course he wants care and shelter. You don...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Junkies have no interest in sex and they have no interest in other people except as suppliers of jun...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS No worse fate can befall a man than to be surrounded by traitor souls.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS To his secretary after a visit from Kurt Cobain, "There's something wrong with that boy. He frowns f...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS If the mortality rate seems high we must realize that Nature is a ruthless teacher. There are no sec...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS In the U.S. you have to be a deviant or exist in dreary boredom. Make no mistake; all intellectuals ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Man has sold his soul for time, language, tools, weapons, and dominance.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Junk is not, like alcohol or weed, a means to increased enjoyment of life. Junk is not a kick. It is...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS In homosexual sex you know exactly what the other person is feeling, so you are identifying with the...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Madness is confusion of levels of fact. . . . Madness is not seeing visions but confusing levels.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Now what sort of man or woman or monster would stroke a centipede I have ever seen? ''And here is my...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Strip your psyche to the bare bones of spontaneous process, and you give yourself one chance in a th...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS NAKED Lunch -- a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS The only possible ETHIC is to do what one wants to do.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Thanks for the American dream, to vulgarize and falsify until the bare lies shine through. Thanks fo...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS How I hate those who are dedicated to producing conformity.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS In the magical universe there are no coincidences and there are no accidents. Nothing happens unless...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS I was new in the game and like all young thieves thought I had a license to steal. It didn't last.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS We must find out what words are and how they function. They become images when written down, but ima...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Americans have a special horror of giving up control, of letting things happen in their own way with...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS I am getting so far out one day I won't come back at all.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Smash the control images. Smash the control machine.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS I had not taken a bath in a year nor changed my clothes or removed them except to stick a needle eve...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Be just and if you can't be just, be arbitrary.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS The youth rebellion [1968] is a worldwide phenomenon that has not been seen before in history. I do ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS He considered that immortality was the only goal worth striving for. He knew it was not something yo...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Gentle Reader, The Word will leap on you with leopard man iron claws, it will cut off fingers and to...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS I feel that this life is sort of a penal colony. People have goofed or we wouldn't be here.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS The idea that addiction is somehow a psychological illness is, I think, totally ridiculous. It's as ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS All the role models are being exposed and this is good because role models are shit. The quicker we ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS I prefer cats to people, for the most part. Most people aren't cute,
& if they are cute the...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS There is a kidney-shaped fish pool outside the picture window. I cleaned it out and put in some larg...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS And there are my cats, engaged in a ritual that goes back thousands of years, tranquilly licking the...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS The cat does not offer services. The cat offers itself.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Evidence indicates that cats were first tamed in Egypt. The Egyptians stored grain, which attracted ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Cat hate reflects an ugly, stupid, loutish, bigoted spirit. There can be no compromise with this Ugl...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS How long does it take man to realize that he cannot want what he wants? You have to live in hell to ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS All the filth and horror, fear, hate disease and death of human history flows between you and the We...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Writers don't write, they read and transcribe.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS I don't make myself work. It's just the thing I want to do. To be completely alone in a room, to kno...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS We gotta find a way off this goddamn cop-ridden planet.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS I know that Nature designs that this whole continent, not merely these thirty-six states, shall be, ...
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...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS We are like water creatures looking up at the land and air and wondering how we can survive in that ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS All knowledge all discoveries belong to everybody. . . . All knowledge all discoveries belong to you...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS There is no line between the 'real world' and 'world of myth and symbol.' Objects, sensations, hit w...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Any belief in Creators or Purpose is wishful thinking. And when you point out that perhaps ALL think...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS In my writing I am acting as a map maker, an explorer of psychic areas . . . a cosmonaut of inner sp...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS My purpose in writing has always been to express human potentials and purposes relevant to the Space...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Love? What is it? Most natural painkiller. What there is . . . LOVE.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS I feel that any form of so called psychotherapy is strongly contraindicated for addicts. The questio...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS A junky runs on junk time. When his junk is cut off, the clock runs down and stops. All he can do is...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS We are setting out to create new worlds, new beings, new modes of consciousness.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Nothing is true, everything is permitted
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Sometimes paranoia's just having all the facts.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Hemingway was a prisoner of his style. No one can talk like the characters in Hemingway except the c...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS You can't fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Thanks, for a country where nobody is allowed to mind his own business. Thanks, for a nation of fink...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS The dogma of science is that the will cannot possibly affect external forces, and I think that's jus...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Nothing exists until or unless it is observed. An artist is making something exist by observing it. ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Hustlers of the world, there is one Mark you cannot beat: the Mark Inside.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS I began to get a feeling (...) of being the only sane man in a nut house. It doesn't make you feel s...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS The boy looks into Mugwump eyes blank as obsidian mirrors, pools of black blood, glory holes in a to...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Some people like neat suburbs. I always am attracted to the rundown and the old and the offbeat.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Scientology is a model control system, a state in fact with its own courts, police, rewards and pena...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Is Control controlled by its need to control? Answer: yes.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Most of the trouble in this world has been caused by folks who can't mind their own business, be...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Nobody's busting into YOUR apartment at three in the morning, are they? Well, then don't worry about...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Out of the closets and into the museums, libraries, architectural monuments, concert halls, bookstor...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS To be an outlaw you must first have a base in law to reject and get out of, I never had such a base....
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS They are all stupid peasants, and the worst of all peasants are the so-called educated. These people...
WILLIAM S BURROUGHS Junk turns the user into a plant. Plants do not feel pain since pain has no function in a stationary...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS All over America, people were pulling credentials out of their pockets and sticking them under someo...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS I started to write in about 1950; I was thirty-five at the time; there didn't seem to be any str...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS That old feeling is still in my leaking heart.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS You know, they ask me if I were on a desert island and I knew nobody would ever see what I wrote, wo...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS For the last four years of her life, Mother was in a nursing home called Chateins in St. Louis ... [...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Build a good name. Keep your name clean. Don’t make compromises, don’t worry about making a bunc...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS You need a good bedside manner with doctors or you will get nowhere.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS May 4, 1985. I am packing for a short trip to New York to discuss the cat book with Brion. In the fr...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS In the beginning his flesh was simply soft, so soft that he was cut to the bone by dust particles, a...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS After 1957 On The Road sold a trillion levis and a million espresso coffee machines, and also sent c...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Exterminate all rational thought
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS O death where is thy sting? The man is never on time...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS If I had my way we'd sleep every night all wrapped around each other like hibernating rattlesnakes.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS The aim of education is the knowledge, not the facts, but of values.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Did I ever tell you about the man
who taught his asshole to talk?

His whole abdomen ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Hip - Someone who knows the score. Someone who understands "jive talk." Someone who is "with it." Th...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS