William S. Burroughs Quotes

"Man is an artifact designed for space travel. He is not designed to remain in his present biologic state any more than a tadpole is designed to remain a tadpole."

"In the U.S., you have to be a deviant or die or boredom."

"Language is a virus from outer space."

"A functioning police state needs no police."

"The face of evil is always the face of total need."

"The road to the western lands is by far the most heavily guarded and therefore most dangerous road in all the world."

[On his alma mater, Harvard University]: "I hated the University and I hated the town it was in. Everything about the place was dead. The University was a fake English setup taken over by the graduates of fake English public schools."

"America is not a young land: it is old and dirty and evil before the settlers, before the Indians. The evil is there waiting."

"A simopath - the technical name for this disorder escapes me - is a citizen convinced that he is an ape or other simian. It is a disorder peculiar to the army, and discharge cures it."

"If civilized countries want to return to Druid Hanging Rites in the Sacred Grove or to drink blood with the Aztecs and feed their Gods with the blood of human sacrifice, let them see what they actually eat and drink. Let them see what is on the end of that long newspaper spoon." -- "Naked Lunch"