William S. Burroughs

Quotes

1. America is not a young land: it is old and dirty and evil before the settlers, before the Indians. The evil is there waiting.

2. 

   Junk is surrounded by magic and taboos, curses and amulets.

3. 

   Ever see a hot shot hit, kid? I saw the Gimp catch one in Philly. We rigged his room with a one-way whorehouse mirror and charged a sawski to watch it. He never got the needle out of his arm. They don't if the shot is right. That's the way they find them, dropper full of clotted blood hanging out of a blue arm. The look in his eyes when it hit --- Kid, it was tasty.

4. 

   There is only one thing a writer can write about: what is in front of his senses at the moment of writing... I am a recording instrument... I do not presume to impose "story "plot" "continuity"... Insofar as I succeed in Direct recording of certain areas of psychic process I may have limited function... I am not an entertainer.

5. 

   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

6. 

   You see control can never be a means to any practical end. ... Control can never be a means to anything but more control ... like Junk.

7. 

   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...

That’s all the quotes.

7 quotes in the collection · come back when we add more