Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
Madness is confusion of levels of fact. . . . Madness is not seeing visions but confusing levels.
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
Facts
Visions
Confusing
Confusion
Madness
Levels
Vision
Seeing
Fact
More quotes by William S. Burroughs
Criminal law is one of the few professions where the client buys someone else's luck. The luck of most people is strictly non-transferrable. But a good criminal lawyer can sell all his luck to a client, and the more luck he sells the more he has to sell.
William S. Burroughs
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.
William S. Burroughs
If everyone is to be made responsible for everything they do, you must extend responsibility beyond the level of conscious intention.
William S. Burroughs
Nothing exists until or unless it is observed. An artist is making something exist by observing it. And his hope for other people is that they will also make it exist by observing it. I call it 'creative observation.' Creative viewing.
William S. Burroughs
as soon as you know you are in prison, you have a possibility to escape.
William S. Burroughs
We have a great elaborate machine which I feel has to be completely dismantled - in order to do that we need people who understand how the machine works - the mass media - unparalleled opportunity.
William S. Burroughs
Shooting is my principal pastime.
William S. Burroughs
Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing.
William S. Burroughs
The first and most important thing an individual can do is to become an individual again, decontrol himself, train himself as to what is going on and win back as much independent ground for himself as possible
William S. Burroughs
I knew [Timothy] Leary, but barely knew, didn't really know Jan [Kerouac].
William S. Burroughs
Many of my characters first came through to me as voices. That's why I use a tape recorder.
William S. Burroughs
There are no innocent bystanders.
William S. Burroughs
in the magical universe there are no coincidences and there are no accidents. nothing happens unless someone wills it to happen
William S. Burroughs
Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative.
William S. Burroughs
Most people don't see what's going on around them. That's my principal message to writers: 'For God's sake, keep your eyes open. Notice what's going on around you.'
William S. Burroughs
Last night I woke up with someone squeezing my hand. It was my other hand.
William S. Burroughs
The idea that addiction is somehow a psychological illness is, I think, totally ridiculous. It's as psychological as malaria. It's a matter of exposure. People, generally speaking, will take any intoxicant or any drug that gives them a pleasant effect if it is available to them.
William S. Burroughs
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.
William S. Burroughs
In Mexico your wishes have a dream power. When you want to see someone, he turns up.
William S. Burroughs
Language is a virus from outer space.
William S. Burroughs
