Top 100 Burroughs Quotes
#1. My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist will blow away your expectation of what late-model literature has to be. Unified by obsessions too eerie not to be real, this gorgeous rearrangement of our century's mental furniture is testimony to a new talent of Burroughs/Coover/Acker scale.
David Foster Wallace
#2. When I was a boy in the late 1950s, the public library refused to stock books by Edgar Rice Burroughs. They were regarded as vulgar, ill-written potboilers.
Michael Dirda
#3. Burroughs a purest ignu his haircut is a cream his left finger pinkey chopped off for early ignu reasons metaphysical spells love spells with psychoanalysts
his very junkhood an accomplishment beyond a million dollars
Allen Ginsberg
#4. The thing is, all my heroes were junkies. Lenny Bruce, Keith Richards, William Burroughs, Miles Davis, Hubert Selby, Jr ... These guys were cool. They were committed. They would not have been caught dead doing an ALF episode.
Jerry Stahl
#5. Who is more real? Homer or Ulysses? Shakespeare or Hamlet? Burroughs or Tarzan?
Robert A. Heinlein
#6. Ginsberg, Burroughs, and Kerouac were all on the side of the savage. That their penny-ante gnosticism was not only perpetuated but mythologized and spread abroad as a gospel of emancipation is something for which we have the Sixties to thank -- or to blame.
Roger Kimball
#7. In 1995, Glaxo bought Burroughs Wellcome and became the presumptive leader in AIDS therapy.
Barton Gellman
#8. I was suckered in by the myth of the man [ William Burroughs] as much as by his work.
Oliver Harris
#9. Authors and artists are still afraid of breaking away as far as [William Burroughs] did ... And he did it in the 50s!
Yony Leyser
#10. I didn't read comic books, growing up. I was more of a science fiction/fantasy novel guy. I loved reading Edgar Rice Burroughs' 'Tarzan' and that kind of stuff.
Jesse L. Martin
#11. I was his "little girl with the William Burroughs mind," his "secret fairy," "female Frank Zappa" and "window onto a magical world." He said I fell to earth, leaving wing-marks on the ceilings of our dreams.
Jalina Mhyana
#12. In 1911, Edgar Rice Burroughs, having failed at everything else, decided to write a novel. He was then in his mid-thirties, married with two children, barely supporting his family as the agent for a pencil-sharpener business.
Michael Dirda
#13. Bizarrely funny ... Rarely is a documentary as well attuned to its subject as Howard Brookner's BURROUGHS, which captures as much about the life, work and sensibility of its subject as its 86 minute format allows.
Janet Maslin
#14. Oh my god, this is so weird! I'm in space, talking to a giant insect. This is like ... I don't know ... William Burroughs or something!
Gavin G. Smith
#15. I sat with the grandson of Edgar Rice Burroughs at the world premiere of 'Tarzan,' and at the end of the film, he was very happy. He told me that we were bringing 'Tarzan' to a whole new generation, and he was very grateful.
Kevin Lima
#16. Origami Striptease reads like William S. Burroughs and Djuna Barnes howling at a brutal paper moon.
Susan Stinson
#17. Like many nonconformist and beat generation writers, William S. Burroughs takes the outcasts of society as his theme.
William S. Burroughs
#18. Burroughs's voice is hard, derisive, inventive, free, funny, serious, poetic, indelibly American.
Joan Didion
#20. P.G. Wodehouse was a huge influence on me when I was younger, as were Edgar Rice Burroughs and George Bernard Shaw.
Michael Moorcock
#21. The other guy I dug a lot was Burroughs because he was a smart man already; he learned it through the druggie pool - the street scene of an old aristocratic kind of man.
Gregory Corso
#23. I realize I have nothing to say to Trent Burroughs as I tell him, "I've been in New York the last four months." New Age Christmas music fails to warm up the chilly vibe. I'm suddenly unsure about everything.
Bret Easton Ellis
#24. Mom and Dad were bibliophiles. Dad shared his father's love of westerns, Mom favored the likes of Zelazny and Heinlein, Howard and Burroughs. We owned several hundred books stored in trunks that comprised our portable library.
Laird Barron
#25. I knew William Burroughs really well, and I was always star struck being around him. I adored him.
Patti Smith
#26. As for the writers who have influenced me they are many. Hemingway, Chandler, Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, Charles Beaumont, William Goldman, Flannery O'Conner, Carson McCullers, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and so many others. As a kid Kipling and Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Robert E. Howard.
Joe R. Lansdale
#27. Christopher Knowles, Buechner, Heiner Mueller, Burroughs, Chekhov, Shakespeare - it's all one body of work.
Robert Wilson
#28. I think it was when I ran into Kerouac and Burroughs - when I was 17 - that I realized I was talking through an empty skull ... I wasn't thinking my own thoughts or saying my own thoughts.
Allen Ginsberg
#29. [Allen] Ginsberg totally helped that out. He was the best sales person. He was the most pop. They are still shocking and relevant, especially [William] Burroughs.
Yony Leyser
#30. I wasn't trying to be an outlaw writer. I never heard of that term; somebody else made it up. But we were all outside the law: Kerouac, Miller, Burroughs, Ginsberg, Kesey; I didn't have a gauge as to who was the worst outlaw. I just recognized allies: my people.
Hunter S. Thompson
#31. Cats of all kinds weave in and out of the text; Burroughs has clearly taken to them in a big way in his old age and seems torn between a fear they will betray him into sentimentality and a resigned acceptance that a man can't be ironic all the time.
Angela Carter
#32. Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs were all my teachers, each one passing through the lobby of the Chelsea Hotel, my new university.
Patti Smith
#33. Burroughs was never really that pleased with the way popular culture and society treated his character. He tried to make a few movies of his own as a result, but they weren't very good.
Brendan Fraser
#34. I had read and admired Ballard and Burroughs, and I thought of them as very powerful effect pedals. You get to a certain place in the story and you just step on the Ballard.
William Gibson
#35. After I got kicked out of CalArts, I moved to Lawrence Kansas where my sister lived. I began working on A William S. Burroughs documentary. I had no idea it would turn into such a big film.
Yony Leyser
#36. I wish I had more control, more like Edgar Rice Burroughs had, but I'm a realist, too. I work in television. I don't know that I would want to spend the rest of my life controlling my characters.
Gene Roddenberry
#37. All of William S. Burroughs friends pushed it forward and introduced me to one another. I was able to enter into that beat family for a while and document it.
Yony Leyser
#38. When I was young, I knew William Burroughs really well. And William's secret desire, which he never quite did, was to write a straightforward detective novel.
Patti Smith
#39. Hollis thought he looked like William Burroughs, minus the bohemian substrate (or perhaps the methadone). Like someone who'd be invited quail shooting with the vice-president, though too careful to get himself shot.
William Gibson
#40. As I was in the air, the ball took a bad hop and caromed behind me, but I was able to catch it with my bare hand. I hit the ground, bounced back up, and threw Burroughs out at first.
Ozzie Smith
#41. There is no right or wrong reading of Naked Lunch, though some readings are more common, and thus Burroughs commercial is not the issue.
Rick Moody
#42. Before I'm a writer, I'm definitely a reader and when I read memoir, I really want it to be true.
Augusten Burroughs
#43. After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say 'I want to see the manager.
William S. Burroughs
#45. To stop drinking, all you have to do is sit. In 100 percent of the documented cases of alcoholism worldwide, the people who recovered all shared one thing in common, no matter how they did it: They didn't do it.
Augusten Burroughs
#46. (The new boyfriend) knows I write every day for hours but has no idea that all I'm writing about is me. It seems wiser to let him think I'm an aspiring novelist instead of just an alcoholic with a year of sobriety who spends eight hours a day writing about the other 16.
Augusten Burroughs
#47. Unquestionably, this drug is is very useful to the artist, activating trains of association that would otherwise be inaccessible, and I owe many of the scenes in Naked Lunch directly to the use of cannabis.
William Burroughs
#48. The atmosphere of our time is fast being cleared of the fumes and deadly gases that arose during the carboniferous age of theology.
John Burroughs
#49. It is not the intensity but the duration of pain that breaks the will to resist.
William S. Burroughs
#50. In Mexico your wishes have a dream power. When you want to see someone, he turns up.
William S. Burroughs
#51. In that little party there was not one who would desert another; yet we were of different countries, different colours, different races, different religions
and one of us was of a different world.
Edgar Rice Burroughs
#52. Addiction is a disease of exposure. Doctors and nurses, for instance, have a high addiction rate.
William S. Burroughs
#53. Anything that is as old as racism is in the blood line of the nation. It's not any superficial thing-that attitude is in the blood and we have to educate about it.
Nannie Helen Burroughs
#54. What I like about you is that I've never met anybody like you in my life. You've got depth and you're funny and you have a sweet, good soul." A breeze from the water passes over us, "And I admire your strength.
Augusten Burroughs
#55. You should know, I tried for many years not to be in love with you, but I failed. And I really did try very hard. But it was not possible, and it never has been, because I have actually loved you from very early in our relationship. Possibly as early as our first meeting.
Augusten Burroughs
#57. We must all face the fact that our leaders are certifiably insane or worse
William S. Burroughs
#58. Should I just sit down, right here at carousel seven, and shake until somebody's arms are around me and they're saying, 'It's okay, I'm here, I'm here, come with me to the institute.
Augusten Burroughs
#59. First there was a young guy sitting in front of television in a T-shirt drinking beer with his mother, then there was an older fatter person sitting in front of television in a T-shirt drinking beer with his mother.
William S. Burroughs
#60. The rocks are not so close akin to us as the soil; they are one more remove from us; but they lie back of all, and are the final source of all ... Time, geologic time, looks out at us from the rocks as from no other objects in the landscape.
John Burroughs
#63. But I can also write in crappy motel rooms, while standing in line, or sitting in the dentist's chair.
Augusten Burroughs
#64. We never sampled our drugs because we were afraid of them, but to admit it aloud would have broken the spell.
Augusten Burroughs
#65. Therapy could be of tremendous benefit to "getting over" one's past if the therapy is focused on specific ways to stop submitting to the temptation to obsess. Many people with difficult histories carry these histories with them, burnishing the past with each retelling.
Augusten Burroughs
#66. (1) Never give anything away for nothing.
(2) Never give more than you have to give (always catch the buyer hungry and always make him wait).
(3) Always take everything back if you possibly can.
William S. Burroughs
#67. Many overlook the fact that Jesus was homeless. He did not only teach the poor; He lived among them.
Dillon Burroughs
#69. We must not simply desire God; we must live in total dependence.
Dillon Burroughs
#70. It is always a foolish thing to contemplate suicide; for no matter how dark the future may appear today, tomorrow may hold for us that which will alter our whole life in an instant, revealing to us nothing but sunshine and happiness. So, for my part, I shall always wait for tomorrow.
Edgar Rice Burroughs
#71. Whatever I may do to serve you will be prompted solely from selfish motives, since it gives me more pleasure to serve you than not.
Edgar Rice Burroughs
#72. Instead of becoming depressed that I was in the locked ward of a mental hospital, I pretended I was playing a role in a movie, possibly on my way to an Emmy.
Augusten Burroughs
#73. When others doubt the power of Jesus, be the one who asks Him to perform the impossible. He often will.
Dillon Burroughs
#74. The path of the mighty beast was guided telepathically by the two people who sat in a huge saddle that was cinched to the thoat's broad back.
Edgar Rice Burroughs
#75. George had been surprised by my ability to leave him. He had not seen that in me.
Augusten Burroughs
#76. This sounds fine with me, I like the idea of seeing a shrink once a week as maintenance. It's another chance to talk about myself without being interrupted. Plus, a shrink doesn't really know me, so I can present a more balanced picture of who I really am.
Augusten Burroughs
#78. The church is not a campus but a community. Pastors are not CEOs; they are shepherds.
Dillon Burroughs
#79. Dream long enough and dream hard enough
you will come to know
dreaming can make it so ...
William S. Burroughs
#80. Before the bud swells, before the grass springs, before the plough is started, comes the sugar harvest. It is sequel of the bitter frost; a sap run is the sweet goodbye of winter.
John Burroughs
#81. Everybody in recovery smokes. If you don't like smoking, don't even bother trying to get sober. Just stay drunk.
Augusten Burroughs
#82. The problem with not having anybody to tell you what to do, I understood, is that there was nobody to tell you what not to do.
Augusten Burroughs
#84. Be willing to be unliked and ridiculed in order to speak the words of the One who matters most.
Dillon Burroughs
#87. If you write one story, it may be bad; if you write a hundred, you have the odds in your favor.
Edgar Rice Burroughs
#89. In a way, I am a psychological transsexual, always trying to "pass" for a normal person but being clocked every time.
Augusten Burroughs
#90. Captain Billings," he drawled finally, "if you will pardon my candor, I might remark that you are something of an ass, don't you know.
Edgar Rice Burroughs
#91. Despite evidence to the contrary, I hated drinking to the point that I misplaced really big slabs of time.
Augusten Burroughs
#92. Look at the immigrants coming to America looking for a better life. What they got now? If they had the misfortune to be successful one of the most gruesome cultural straightjackets in history.
William S. Burroughs
#93. Fact: upon locking yourself our of your apartment you will immediately need to use the bathroom. Fact: and then you will stand in place and watch your door. You will just stare. As though rebuffed by it. As though it has done this to you.
Augusten Burroughs
#94. Anger and hate against one we love steels our hearts, but contempt or pity leaves us silent and ashamed.
Edgar Rice Burroughs
#95. Mohammed? Are you kidding? He was dreamed up by the Mecca Chamber of Commerce.
William S. Burroughs
#96. Tangier is one of the few places left in the world where, so long as you don't proceed to robbery, violence, or some form of crude, antisocial behavior, you can do exactly what you want.
William S. Burroughs
#97. People generally like happy endings, which is something I learned from my years in advertising. I like happy endings myself, but only if they're honest. I'm just as happy with a terrible, hopeless ending.
Augusten Burroughs
#98. The line between inner and outer landscapes is breaking down. Earthquakes can result from seismic upheavals within the human mind. The whole random universe of the industrial age is breaking down into cryptic fragments.
William S. Burroughs
#99. Safety comes in our nearness to God, not in our distance from our enemies.
Dillon Burroughs
#100. To be well skilled in the mystery of Christian contentment is the duty, glory, and excellence of a Christian.
Jeremiah Burroughs
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