Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
Whether you like it or not, you are committed to the human endeavor. I cannot ally myself with such a purely negative goal as avoidance of suffering. Suffering is a chance you take by the fact of being alive.
William S. Burroughs
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
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
Human
Alive
Humans
Goal
Avoidance
Take
Suffering
Ally
Like
Chance
Purely
Whether
Allies
Fact
Endeavor
Facts
Committed
Cannot
Negative
More quotes by William S. Burroughs
Panic is the sudden realization that everything around you is alive.
William S. Burroughs
I've listened to and know Allen Ginsberg music and met him a couple of times, but I don't have any strong statements to make.
William S. Burroughs
Sometimes paranoia's just having all the facts.
William S. Burroughs
Everything Jack says is to be taken with considerable reserve.
William S. Burroughs
People have nothing to say, but they are afraid of saying nothing, so what they do say comes out flat and vapid and meaningless. The shadow of death is on every face.
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
I knew [Timothy] Leary, but barely knew, didn't really know Jan [Kerouac].
William S. Burroughs
Death needs time for what it kills to grow in.
William S. Burroughs
Artists to my mind are the real architects of change.
William S. Burroughs
I've seen villages in South America with no police whatever. Then the cops would arrive, then the sanitary inspectors, and before you know it they've got all the problems - crime, juvenile delinquency, the whole works - just like us.
William S. Burroughs
Black magic operates most effectively in preconscious, marginal areas. Casual curses are the most effective.
William S. Burroughs
No one is ever really alone. You are part of everything alive.
William S. Burroughs
In this world, [of Flash and Filigree] nothing is true, and censure or outrage is simply irrelevant.
William S. Burroughs
Human, Allen, is an adjective, and its use as a noun is in itself regrettable.
William S. Burroughs
You know a real friend? Someone you know will look after your cat after you are gone.
William S. Burroughs
The Federal Narcotics Bureau does a grave disservice by disseminating a lot of misinformation. Most of what they say is such nonsense that I didn't believe them about addiction.
William S. Burroughs
For God's sake, keep your eyes open. Notice what's going on around you.
William S. Burroughs
The self is like a pimping blackmailing chauffeur who gets you from here to there on word lines.
William S. Burroughs
Like pregnant women lose their teeth feeding the stranger, junkies lose their yellow fangs feeding the monkey.
William S. Burroughs
Fear of death is form of stasis horrors. The dead weight of time.
William S. Burroughs