Top 100 Burroughs Quotes
#1. Before I'm a writer, I'm definitely a reader and when I read memoir, I really want it to be true.
Augusten Burroughs
#2. After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say 'I want to see the manager.
William S. Burroughs
#4. 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
#5. (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
#6. 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
#7. 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
#8. It is not the intensity but the duration of pain that breaks the will to resist.
William S. Burroughs
#9. In Mexico your wishes have a dream power. When you want to see someone, he turns up.
William S. Burroughs
#10. 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
#11. Addiction is a disease of exposure. Doctors and nurses, for instance, have a high addiction rate.
William S. Burroughs
#12. 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
#13. 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
#14. 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
#16. We must all face the fact that our leaders are certifiably insane or worse
William S. Burroughs
#17. 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
#18. 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
#19. 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
#22. But I can also write in crappy motel rooms, while standing in line, or sitting in the dentist's chair.
Augusten Burroughs
#23. We never sampled our drugs because we were afraid of them, but to admit it aloud would have broken the spell.
Augusten Burroughs
#24. 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
#25. (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
#26. Many overlook the fact that Jesus was homeless. He did not only teach the poor; He lived among them.
Dillon Burroughs
#28. We must not simply desire God; we must live in total dependence.
Dillon Burroughs
#29. 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
#30. 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
#31. 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
#32. When others doubt the power of Jesus, be the one who asks Him to perform the impossible. He often will.
Dillon Burroughs
#33. 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
#34. George had been surprised by my ability to leave him. He had not seen that in me.
Augusten Burroughs
#35. 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
#37. The church is not a campus but a community. Pastors are not CEOs; they are shepherds.
Dillon Burroughs
#38. Dream long enough and dream hard enough
you will come to know
dreaming can make it so ...
William S. Burroughs
#39. 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
#40. Everybody in recovery smokes. If you don't like smoking, don't even bother trying to get sober. Just stay drunk.
Augusten Burroughs
#41. 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
#43. Be willing to be unliked and ridiculed in order to speak the words of the One who matters most.
Dillon Burroughs
#46. If you write one story, it may be bad; if you write a hundred, you have the odds in your favor.
Edgar Rice Burroughs
#48. In a way, I am a psychological transsexual, always trying to "pass" for a normal person but being clocked every time.
Augusten Burroughs
#49. 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
#50. Despite evidence to the contrary, I hated drinking to the point that I misplaced really big slabs of time.
Augusten Burroughs
#51. 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
#52. 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
#53. Anger and hate against one we love steels our hearts, but contempt or pity leaves us silent and ashamed.
Edgar Rice Burroughs
#54. Mohammed? Are you kidding? He was dreamed up by the Mecca Chamber of Commerce.
William S. Burroughs
#55. 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
#56. 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
#57. 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
#58. Safety comes in our nearness to God, not in our distance from our enemies.
Dillon Burroughs
#59. To be well skilled in the mystery of Christian contentment is the duty, glory, and excellence of a Christian.
Jeremiah Burroughs
#60. Jane saw the little note and ignored it, for she was very angry and hurt and mortified, but - she was a woman, and so eventually she picked it up and read it. MY
Edgar Rice Burroughs
#61. One thing was certain: I would be in their Tang commercial. And if any of the other children tried to get in the way, I would use my pencil to blind them
Augusten Burroughs
#62. To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter ... to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird's nest or a wildflower in spring - these are some of the rewards of the simple life.
John Burroughs
#63. Intelligence and war are games, perhaps the only meaningful games left. If any player becomes too proficient, the game is threatened with termination.
William S. Burroughs
#64. Why is it that we feel bad when "all" we can do for a person is pray for them? We feel like we need to work to help, but remember: prayer is the work.
Dillon Burroughs
#65. 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
#66. The Lord watches over us every moment of every day. He is there
and He cares
about every step and every breath.
Dillon Burroughs
#67. 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
#68. The only other people who have had experiences similar to those of this man were locked up inside institutions for the criminally insane. The difference is, this guy gets business cards.
Augusten Burroughs
#69. I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order.
John Burroughs
#70. Humility is indeed beatness, a compulsory virtue that no one exhibits unless he has to.
William S. Burroughs
#71. Nothing surprises me now, I tell him. I am stoic. I am Joan of Arc, with liver damage and an unused penis.
Augusten Burroughs
#72. No wonder I had found that woman so offensive. Sometimes things feel that bad. Sometimes you just feel like shit.
Augusten Burroughs
#73. God is calling you to change the world one life at a time and one small step at a time. Begin today where you are.
Dillon Burroughs
#74. Nothing made sense to me anymore. I knew I was young, I knew I was small. But I was worried that I might already be ruined.
Augusten Burroughs
#75. Scientology is a model control system, a state in fact with its own courts, police, rewards and penalties.
William S. Burroughs
#76. Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact.
William S. Burroughs
#77. How beautifully leaves grow old. How full of light and color are their last days.
John Burroughs
#78. Science sees the process of evolution from the outside, as one might a train of cars going by, and resolves it into the physical and mechanical elements, without getting any nearer the reason of its going by, or the point of its departure or destination.
John Burroughs
#81. You exposed your penis on national television, Max. What am I supposed to do?"
"I didn't expose it, Howard, it just sort of peeked out.
Augusten Burroughs
#82. Any belief in Creators or Purpose is wishful thinking. And when you point out that perhaps ALL thinking is wishful, reactions of intense irritation give evidence that we are not dealing with logic but with faith.
William S. Burroughs
#83. Day had now given away to night and as we wandered along the great avenue lighted by the two moons of Barsoom, and with Earth looking down upon us out of her luminous green eye, it seemed that we were alone in the universe, and I, at least, was content that it should be so
Edgar Rice Burroughs
#84. [E]very comfort that the saints have in this world is an earnest penny to them of those eternal mercies that the Lord has provided for them.
Jeremiah Burroughs
#85. When nature made the blue-bird she wished to propitiate both the sky and the earth, so she gave him the color of the one on his back and the hue of the other on his breast.
John Burroughs
#86. The unworthies in power feel danger, like cows uneasily pawing the ground with a great Moo.
William S. Burroughs
#87. In some ways, blogging is like drinking - it gives a person permission to be a total asshole.
Augusten Burroughs
#88. Do not despise your own place and hour. Every place is under the stars, every place is the center of the world.
John Burroughs
#89. I am tired from having lived seventeen different lives, compressed into the space of one.
Augusten Burroughs
#90. If you want to see birds, you must have birds in your heart.
John Burroughs
#91. 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
#93. Every man has inside himself a parasitic being who is acting not at all to his advantage.
William S. Burroughs
#94. The beautiful vagabonds, endowed with every grace, masters of all climes, and knowing no bounds - how many human aspirations are realized in their free, holiday-lives, and how many suggestions to the poet in their flight and song!
John Burroughs
#95. His straight and perfect figure, muscled as the best of the ancient Roman gladiators must have been muscled, and yet with the soft and sinuous curves of a Greek god, told at a glance the wondrous combination of enormous strength with suppleness and speed.
Edgar Rice Burroughs
#96. Turn off the light, she says as she walks away, creating a small woosh that smells sweet and chemical. It makes me sad because it's the smell she makes when she's leaving.
Augusten Burroughs
#97. Naked Mr. America, burning frantic with self bone love, screams out: My asshole confounds the Louvre! I fart ambrosia and shit pure gold turds! My cock spurts soft diamonds in the morning sunlight!
William S. Burroughs
#98. The more absolute the need, the more predictable the behavior becomes until it is mathematically certain.
William S. Burroughs
#99. No worldly pursuit compares to the joy of experiencing the change of one soul from death to life.
Dillon Burroughs
#100. Mr. Bradley-Mr. Martin is two people because it is a statement of the impasse of dualistic universe which he has created, they have created. I think that any dualistic universe ends in Nova. Mr. Bradley-Mr. Martin is a kind of God. A God of stupidity, cowardice, ugliness.
William S. Burroughs
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