William S. Burroughs

"Nobody owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death."

"There is no intensity of love or feeling that does not involve the risk of crippling hurt. It is a duty to take this risk, to love and feel without defense or reserve."

"Cheat your landlord if you can and must, but do not try to shortchange the Muse. It cannot be done. You can't fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal."

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

"I wasn't exposed to art as I was growing up, and can't recall the first time I saw a work of art. However, I remember very clearly a vision I had of a little green reindeer when I was a child, and visions emanate from the same mythical area where painting resides. Whatever the reason, I immediately felt comfortable working with visual materials."

"To be an outlaw you must first have a base in law to reject and get out of, I never had such a base. I never had a place I could call home that meant any more than a key to a house, apartment or hotel room. … Am I alien? Alien from what exactly? Perhaps my home is my dream city, more real than my waking life precisely because it has no relation to waking life…"

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

"when I become death. Death is the seed from which I grow."

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

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

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