William S. Burroughs Quotes & Sayings (Page 2)

“You can't fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.”

“Gentle reader, the Fountain of Youth is radioactive, and those who imbibe its poisonous heavy waters will suffer the hideous fate of decaying metal. Yet almost without exception, the wretched idiot inhabitants of our benighted planet would gulp down this radioactive excrement if it were offered.”

“Changes... can only be effected by alterations in the original. The only thing not prerecorded in a prerecorded universe are the prerecordings themselves. The copies can only repeat themselves word for word. A virus is a copy. You can pretty it up, cut it up, scramble it - it will reassemble in the same form.”

“Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape.”

“Sometimes paranoia's just having all the facts.”

“Junk is the ideal product... the ultimate merchandise. No sales talk necessary. The client will crawl through a sewer and beg to buy.”

“Man is an artifact designed for space travel. He is not designed to remain in his present biologic state any more than a tadpole is designed to remain a tadpole.”

“Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact.”

“Every man has inside himself a parasitic being who is acting not at all to his advantage.”

“A cat's rage is beautiful, burning with pure cat flame, all its hair standing up and crackling blue sparks, eyes blazing and sputtering.”