Words & Photos of William Burroughs

“In the magical universe there are no coincidences and there are no accidents. Nothing happens unless someone wills it to happen.”

 

“In homosexual sex you know exactly what the other person is feeling, so you are identifying with the other person completely. In heterosexual sex you have no idea what the other person is feeling.”

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

“Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing.”

“Smash the control images. Smash the control machine.”

BELOW: William Burroughs. Philip Whalen. Allen Ginsberg

“A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on."

“In my writing I am acting as a map maker, an explorer of psychic areas . . . a cosmonaut of inner space, and I see no point in exploring areas that have already been thoroughly surveyed.”

 BELOW: William Burroughs. Patti Smith.

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

“How I hate those who are dedicated to producing conformity.”

BELOW: William Burroughs. David Bowie.

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

“The way to kill a man or a nation is to cut off his dreams, the way the whites are taking care of the Indians: killing their dreams, their magic, their familiar spirits.”

"Perhaps all pleasure is only relief.”

“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.”

“Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer.”

“I am getting so far out one day I won't come back at all.”