Quote

A junky runs on junk time. When the junk is cut off, the clock runs down and stops. All he can do is hang on and wait for non-junky time to start. A sick junky has no escape from external time, no place to go. He can only wait.

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
Junk
Sick
Stops
Cutting
Waiting
External
Start
Runs
Running
Hang
Place
Clock
Time
Escape
Junky
Wait

More quotes by William S. Burroughs

Image
He who has learned to do nothing with his whole mind and body will have everything done for him.
William S. Burroughs
Image
Tell Allen I plead guilty to vampirism and other crimes against life. But I love him and nothing else cancels love.
William S. Burroughs
Image
A consumer society is about simplfying and degrading the consumer as well as the product.
William S. Burroughs
Image
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
Image
I'm definitely antiscientist because I feel that science represents a conspiracy to impose as the real and only universe, the universe of scientists themselves - they're reality-addicts, they've got to have things so real so they can get their hands on it.
William S. Burroughs
Image
Faced by the actual practice of freedom, the French and American revolutions would be forced to stand by their words.
William S. Burroughs
Image
Is Control controlled by its need to control? Answer: yes.
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
Whatever happened to God's justice? I am convinced that God exist and God is one asshole.
William S. Burroughs
Image
I miss you so much your absence causes me, at times, accute pain. I don't mean sexually. I mean in connection with my writing.
William S. Burroughs
Image
Always remember, there's no point trying to be faithful to the book because film and writing are just two completely different things. Any film stands on its own, apart from whether it's based on a novel.
William S. Burroughs
Image
My characters are quite as real to me as so-called real people which is one reason why I'm not subject to what is known as loneliness. I have plenty of company.
William S. Burroughs
Image
Visual art and writing don't exist on an aesthetic hierarchy that positions one above the other, because each is capable of things the other can't do at all. Sometimes one picture is equal to 30 pages of discourse, just as there are things images are completely incapable of communicating.
William S. Burroughs
Image
I awoke from The Sickness at the age of forty-five, calm and sane, and in reasonably good health except for a weakened liver and the look of borrowed flesh common to all who survive The Sickness.
William S. Burroughs
Image
As soon as you have a problem, it's insoluble. These things should never have been allowed to happen.
William S. Burroughs
Image
Like pregnant women lose their teeth feeding the stranger, junkies lose their yellow fangs feeding the monkey.
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
Artists to my mind are the real architects of change.
William S. Burroughs
Image
I feel that opiates - I include opium and all its derivatives, such as morphine, heroin, pantopon, etc. - are quite useless for any sort of creative work, useful though they may be for routine work. Much of the hard physical work in the Far East is done by opium addicts.
William S. Burroughs
Image
The whole point is, I feel the machine should be eliminated. Now that it has served its purpose of alerting us to the dangers of machine control.
William S. Burroughs