William S. Burroughs Mean Quotations

Anything that can be done chemically can be done by other means.

Belief is a meaningless word. What does it mean? I believe something. Okay, now you have someone who is hearing voices and believes in these voices. It doesn't mean they have any necessary reality. Your whole concept of your "I" is an illusion. You have to give something called an "I" before you speak of what the "I" believes.

Junk is not, like alcohol or weed, a means to increased enjoyment of life. Junk is not a kick. It is a way of life.

You see, control can never be a means to any practical end...It can never be a means to anything but more control...like junk..

If you talk you always end up with politics, it gets nowhere. I mean man it's strictly from the soft typewriter.

I miss you so much your absence causes me, at times, accute pain. I don't mean sexually. I mean in connection with my writing.

It is to be remembered that all art is magical in origin - music, sculpture, writing, painting - and by magical I mean intended to produce very definite results. Paintings were originally formulae to make what is painted happen. Art is not an end in itself, any more than Einstein's matter-into-energy formulae is an end in itself. Like all formulae, art was originally FUNCTIONAL, intended to make things happen, the way an atom bomb happens from Einstein's formulae.