Latest William S. Burroughs Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• I read a lot of books for information, like doctor books, spy books. . . .

  William S. Burroughs

  Book, Doctors, Spy

  Source: sensitiveskinmagazine.com

• Exorcism is a subject that interests me, and books on shamanism, I've read through.

  William S. Burroughs

  Book, Exorcism, Shamanism

  Source: sensitiveskinmagazine.com

• There's a book called Mummy and the people actually seem to have become addicted to mummy dust. And mummy dust was somehow made from people who've died of the most loathsome diseases. It's too bad that [David] Cronenberg didn't see this book, see I only saw it after the film was made. It might have been of interest to him.

  William S. Burroughs

  Book, Dust, People

  Interview with Allen Ginsberg, sensitiveskinmagazine.com. March 1992.

• I read Mailer's Ancient Evenings with great interest because I was interested in . . . the seven souls structure, which was very helpful to me in Western Lands. And also in Place of Dead Roads. So that's Mailer.

  William S. Burroughs

  Land, Soul, Evening

  Source: sensitiveskinmagazine.com

• 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

  Book, Writing, Two

  Source: sensitiveskinmagazine.com

• The idea was that we would decide the order when we looked at the proofs. I remember Brion Gysin saying "Well, why change it? It's perfect the way it is, the way it came from the printer." Made one major change, that is, the first chapter that came from the printers, which would be the beginning, we moved to the end. The first chapter became the last chapter. There's no actual cutups in Naked Lunch.

  William S. Burroughs

  Order, Ideas, Lunch

  Interview with Allen Ginsberg, sensitiveskinmagazine.com. March 1992.

• Life is a cutup. And to pretend that you write or paint in a timeless vacuum is just simply . . . not . . . true, not in accord with the facts of human perception.

  William S. Burroughs

  Writing, Perception, Vacuums

  Source: sensitiveskinmagazine.com

• I was thinking about New Mexico, and I rounded the corner in New York, and there was a New Mexico license plate: "New Mexico, land of enchantment."

  William S. Burroughs

  New York, Thinking, Land

  Source: sensitiveskinmagazine.com

• I think Judge Learned Hand was a cultured, intelligent man.

  William S. Burroughs

  Intelligent, Men, Thinking

  Source: sensitiveskinmagazine.com

• You see, should I stand in front of a landscape and paint it, I'm completely ignoring the factor of time. While I am painting it, it's changing, clouds are changing, all sorts of things. So there's the myth there of someone creating in a timeless vacuum.

  William S. Burroughs

  Clouds, Creating, Vacuums

  Source: sensitiveskinmagazine.com

• Naked Lunch was from about a thousand pages of material. A lot of it overflowed, then, into the cut-up trilogy including Nova Express.

  William S. Burroughs

  Cutting, Lunch, Naked

  Source: sensitiveskinmagazine.com

• I like the shaman very much, the way he was crying.

  William S. Burroughs

  Way, Cry

  Source: sensitiveskinmagazine.com

• 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

  Want, Exorcism, Argument

  Source: sensitiveskinmagazine.com

• The country with a low birth rate and low death rate will be hardest hit - and so the poor may indeed inherit the earth, because they're healthier.

  William S. Burroughs

  Country, Birth Rate, Hardest Hit

  Source: realitystudio.org

• The essence of White Supremacy is this: they are people who want to keep things as they are. That their children's children's children might be a different color is something very alarming to them - in short they are committed to the maintenance of the static image.

  William S. Burroughs

  Children, Color, Essence

  Source: realitystudio.org

• In the event of atomic war there is a tremendous biological advantage in the so-called undeveloped areas that have a high birth rate and high death rate because, man, they can plow under those mutations.

  William S. Burroughs

  War, Men, Birth Rate

  Source: realitystudio.org

• Biologically speaking the Afro-Asiatic block is in the ascendancy - always remember that both Negro and White are minority groups - the largest race is the Mongoloid group.

  William S. Burroughs

  Block, Race, White

  Source: realitystudio.org

• [Arab peoples] are stuck back thousands of years and they think they're going to get out with a TV set.

  William S. Burroughs

  Thinking, Years, Tvs

  Source: realitystudio.org

• Most all methods of capitol punishment are designed to inflict the maximum of humiliation - not attempts to prevent suicide.

  William S. Burroughs

  Suicide, Punishment, Method

  Source: realitystudio.org

• "I wouldn't be in your position" - old saw. If there is any political move that I would advocate it would be an alliance between America and Red China, if they'd have us.

  William S. Burroughs

  Moving, America, Political

  Source: realitystudio.org

• I'm against Capitol Punishment in all forms, and I have written many pamphlets on this subject in the manner of Swift's Modest Proposal pamphlet incorporated into Naked Lunch; these pamphlets have marked Naked Lunch as an obscene book.

  William S. Burroughs

  Book, Lunch, Punishment

  Source: realitystudio.org

• [Political movements] both favor alcohol and are against pot.

  William S. Burroughs

  Alcohol, Political, Movement

  Source: realitystudio.org

• All political movements are basically anti-creative - since a political movement is a form of war.

  William S. Burroughs

  War, Creative, Political

  Source: realitystudio.org

• There's no place for impractical dreamers around here.

  William S. Burroughs

  Dreamer

  Source: realitystudio.org

• 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

  Opportunity, Media, Order

  Source: realitystudio.org