Quote

Americans have a special horror of giving up control, of letting things happen in their own way without interference.

William S. Burroughs

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

William S. Burroughs
Age: 83 †
Born: 1914
Born: February 5
Died: 1997
Died: August 11
Essayist
Novelist
Painter
Photographer
Poet
Prosaist
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Writer
St. Louis
Missouri
William Seward Burroughs II
Uilʹi︠a︡m Berrouz
William Lee
William Burroughs
Ouiliam Baroouz
William Seward Burroughs
Willy Lee
William S. (William Seward) Burroughs
Special
Happen
Happens
Without
Interference
Giving
Letting
Way
Horror
Things
Americans
Control

More quotes by William S. Burroughs

Image
In exorcism, a verbal argument can never do anything. You can't ever beat the entity in a verbal argument because that's what he wants. It's only through a confront, a non-verbal confront, that anything happens. It has to be non-verbal.
William S. Burroughs
Image
He [Samuel Beckett] is great, a very great writer. Any modern writer is bound to be influenced by [James] Joyce. Of course, by Beckett as well.
William S. Burroughs
Image
A writer does not own words any more than a painter owns colors. So lets dispense with this originality fetish… Look, listen and transcribe and forget about being original.
William S. Burroughs
Image
How long does it take man to realize that he cannot want what he wants? You have to live in hell to see heaven.
William S. Burroughs
Image
No one is ever really alone. You are part of everything alive.
William S. Burroughs
Image
Is Control controlled by its need to control? Answer: yes.
William S. Burroughs
Image
Fear of death is form of stasis horrors. The dead weight of time.
William S. Burroughs
Image
And there are my cats, engaged in a ritual that goes back thousands of years, tranquilly licking themselves after the meal. Practical animals, they prefer to have others provide the food ... some of them do. There must have been a split between the cats who accepted domestication and those who did not.
William S. Burroughs
Image
I had not taken a bath in a year nor changed my clothes or removed them except to stick a needle every hour in the fibrous grey wooden flesh of heroin addiction. I did absolutely nothing.
William S. Burroughs
Image
Writers, like elephants, have long, vicious memories. There are things I wish I could forget.
William S. Burroughs
Image
Intelligence and war are games, perhaps the only meaningful games left. If any player becomes too proficient, the game is threatened with termination.
William S. Burroughs
Image
What are Americans? We've got everything from sharecroppers to atomic physicist here, and there's certainly no uniformity in their thought processes. There's very little they have in common. In fact, Americans should we say, have less in common than any other nationality.
William S. Burroughs
Image
Language is a virus from outer space.
William S. Burroughs
Image
Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer.
William S. Burroughs
Image
Kick is seeing things from a special angle. Kick is momentary freedom from the claims of the aging, cautious, nagging, fightened flesh.
William S. Burroughs
Image
Virtue is simply happiness, and happiness is a by-product of function. You are happy when you are functioning.
William S. Burroughs
Image
Many doctors are drawn to this profession (psychology) because they have an innate deficiency of insight into the motives, feelings and thoughts of others, a deficiency they hope to remedy by ingesting masses of data.
William S. Burroughs
Image
He is a boy sleeping against the mosque wall, ejaculates wet dreaming into a thousand cunts pink and smooth as sea shells.
William S. Burroughs
Image
My relationship with cats has saved me from a deadly and pervasive ignorance.
William S. Burroughs
Image
Last night I woke up with someone squeezing my hand. It was my other hand.
William S. Burroughs