Like many nonconformist and beat generation writers, William S. Burroughs takes the outcasts of society as his theme.

We must all face the fact that our leaders are certifiably insane or worse

After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say 'I want to see the manager.'

After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it.

Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer.

What does the money machine eat? It eats youth, spontaneity, life, beauty, and, above all, it eats creativity. It eats quality and sh*ts quantity.

I think anybody incapable of changing his mind is crazy.

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.

The cat does not offer services. The cat offers itself.

Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact.

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

Deep experience is never peaceful.

True gender equality in Scotland - and elsewhere - is still some way off.

The only condition of fighting for the right to create is faith in your own vocation, readiness to serve, and refusal to compromise.

Yeah, I read Judy Blume. My mother didn't like that, but I read it anyhow.

The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.

You may not believe in evolution, and that is all right. How we humans came to be the way we are is far less important than how we should act now to get out of the mess we have made for ourselves.

Rights are to be taken, not requested; seized, not begged for.

Sometimes I breathe you in and I know you know.

I had this notion of what I called a democratic way of looking around, that nothing was more or less important.