My Education Quotes

“as soon as you know you are in prison, you have a possibility to escape.”
― William S. Burroughs, My Education: A Book of Dreams

“what a horrible loutish planet this is. the dominant species consists of sadistic morons, faces bearing the hideous lineaments of spiritual famine swollen with stupid hate. hopeless rubbish.”
― William S. Burroughs, My Education: A Book of Dreams

“dream long enough and dream hard enough
you will come to know
dreaming can make it so...”
― William S. Burroughs, My Education: A Book of Dreams

“For years I wondered why dreams are so often dull when related, and this morning I find the answer, which is very simple - like most answers, you have always known it: No context ... like a stuffed animal set on the floor of a bank.”
― William S. Burroughs, My Education: A Book of Dreams

“he asked if i wouldn't like to live completely without problems, say in greece maybe, nice climate, everything provided? i say: "when we find out what we are actually doing and who we actually are, that is the point of living...it may be only a few seconds...a few seconds of significant actions, out of a lifetime...”
― William S. Burroughs, My Education: A Book of Dreams

“all abilities are paid for with disabilities. perfect health may entail the heavy toll of bovine stupidity. insight into one area involves blind spots in another. i could not have done what i have done as a writer had i been a gifted mathematician or physicist.
honesty wrung out of him by pain, he cried out with a loud voice.”
― William S. Burroughs, My Education: A Book of Dreams

“A writer's will is the winds of dead calm in the Western Lands. Point way out he can start stirring of the sail. Writer, where are you going? To write. Here we are in texts already written on the sky. Where he doesn't need to write anymore. A slight seismic with the cat book. Always remember, the work is the mainsail to reach the Western Lands. The texts sing. Everything is grass and bushes, a desert or a maze of texts. Here you are ... never use the same door twice. Sky in all directions ... on the word for word. The word for word is word. The western sail stirs candles on 1920 country club table. Each page is a door to everything is permitted. The fragile lifeboat between this and that. Your words are the sails.”
― William S. Burroughs, My Education: A Book of Dreams

“The usual mixture of rooms and squares and streets that is the mark of the Land of the Dead. Streets lead into kitchens and bedrooms, so no area is completely private or completely public.”
― William S. Burroughs, My Education: A Book of Dreams

“Land of the Dead. No breakfast. No liquor. No dinner.”
― William S. Burroughs, My Education: A Book of Dreams

“I harbor deep distaste for scientists. Give me a worldly cultured priest any day, and twice on Sunday… and not some timorous old beastie, cowering in the eternal lavatory of a dead universe.”
― William S. Burroughs, My Education: A Book of Dreams

“Here we are in plague-stricken New York? Airborne AIDS, is it? And you figure to levitate your way out.”
― William S. Burroughs, My Education: A Book of Dreams