Interzone Quotes

“We have a new type of rule now. Not one-man rule, or rule of aristocracy or plutocracy, but of small groups elevated to positions of absolute power by random pressures, and subject to political and economic factors that leave little room for decision. They are representatives of abstract forces who have reached power through surrender of self. The iron-willed dictator is a thing of the past. There will be no more Stalins, no more Hitlers. The rulers of this most insecure of all worlds are rulers by accident, inept, frightened pilots at the controls of a vast machine they cannot understand, calling in experts to tell them which buttons to push.”
― William S. Burroughs, Interzone

“I feel there is some hideous new force loose in the world like a creeping sickness, spreading, blighting. Remoter parts of the world seem better now, because they are less touched by it. Control, bureaucracy, regimentation, these are merely symptoms of a deeper sickness that no political or economic program can touch. What is the sickness itself?”
― William S. Burroughs, Interzone

“It is simply that I divide people into those who matter and those who do not, and I have no concern with quantitative criteria.”
― William S. Burroughs, Interzone

“I could have been a successful bank robber, gangster, business executive, psychoanalyst, drug trafficker, explorer, bullfighter, but the conjecture of circumstances was never there. Over the years I begin to doubt if my time will ever come. It will come, or it will not come. There is no use trying to force it. Attempts to break through have led to curbs, near disasters, warnings. I cultivate an alert passivity, as though watching an opponent for the slightest sign of weakness.”
― William S. Burroughs, Interzone

“It was Christmas Day and Danny the Car Wiper hit the street junksick and broke after seventy-two hours in the precinct jail. It was a clear bright day, but there was warmth in the sun. Danny shivered with an inner cold. He turned up the collar of his worn, greasy black overcoat.
This beat benny wouldn't pawn for a deuce, he thought.”
― William S. Burroughs, Interzone

“Assassin of geraniums! Murderer of the lilies!”
― William S. Burroughs, Interzone

“There are some things of which I cannot even bring myself to squeak," said the rat. "The things a girl sees in a warehouse!”
― William S. Burroughs, Interzone

“Now touch it just there.... See how it pulses. And now I am going to conceive The Great Work," he says, shitting on the laboratory floor. "I have created life!!" he screams, pointing to a roundworm undulating up out of the shit, give a Bronx cheer, grow to a great serpent with lamprey mouth and chase the "scientist" through his Yokohama appliances.”
― William S. Burroughs, Interzone

“Undulate me, baby; and let me undulate you.”
― William S. Burroughs, Interzone

“Come see me in my apartment under the school privy. Show you something interesting," said the janitor, drooling green coca juice.”
― William S. Burroughs, Interzone

“Whereupon he did loose upon my innocent head a blast of blasphemies like burning lions or unsuccessful horse abortionists cooked in slow Lux to prevent the shrinkage of their worm.”
― William S. Burroughs, Interzone

“A pig forty feet high is sliced open by a huge neon-tube knife.”
― William S. Burroughs, Interzone

“Motel. Motel. Motel loneliness moans across the continent like foghorns over still oily waters of tidal rivers.”
― William S. Burroughs, Interzone

“The outhouse falls in a cloud of powdered wood and termites, and the Human Projectile stands there in his black shit suit. A giant rubber asshole in a limestone cliff clicks open and sucks the Human Projectile in like spaghetti. Noise of distant thunder and the Projectile pops out with a great fart, flies a hundred feet through the air into a net supported by four gliders. His shit suit splits and a round worm emerges and does a belly dance. The worm suit peels off like a condom and the Aztec Youth stands naked with a hard-on in the rising sun, ejaculates bloody crystals with a scream of agony. The crowd moans and whimpers and writhes. They snatch up the stones dissolve in red and crystal light.... The boy has gone away through an invisible door.”
― William S. Burroughs, Interzone

“Not bad, young man, not bad. But you must learn the meaning of discipline. Now you will observe in my production every word got some kinda awful function fit into mosaic on the shithouse wall of the world. That's discipline, son. Always at all times know thy wants and demand same like a thousand junkies storm the crystal spine clinics cook down the Gray ladies.”
― William S. Burroughs, Interzone

“Death dressed as an admiral hang Billy Budd with his own hands and Judge Lynch sneer, "Dead suns can't witness." But the witness will rise from the concrete of Hudson with a fossil prick to point out the innocent wise guy.”
― William S. Burroughs, Interzone

“The Word, gentle reader, will flay you down to the laughing bones and the author will do a striptease with his own intestines.”
― William S. Burroughs, Interzone

“Armed with a meat cleaver, the Author chase a gentle reader down the Midway and into the Hall of Mirrors, trap him impaled on crystal cocks.”
― William S. Burroughs, Interzone

“My thoughts turn to crime, incredible journeys of exploration, expression in terms of an extreme act, some excess of feeling or behavior that will shatter the human pattern.”
― William S. Burroughs, Interzone

“The priests considered these monstrosities a way of humiliating the human race before the gods, in the hopes of diverting their anger.”
― William S. Burroughs, Interzone

“I hide from the Friend in a florist's shop, under a case of flowers. He stands by the case as though at my coffin, crying and wringing his hands and begging me to give up the assassination of the Holy Man. I am crying too, my tears falling in yellow dust, but I won't give up.”
― William S. Burroughs, Interzone

“PLEASE IMAGINE AN EXPLOSION ON A SHIP”
― William S. Burroughs, Interzone

“But the enemy needs bodies to get around.”
― William S. Burroughs, Interzone