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England has the most sordid literary scene I've ever seen. They all meet in the same pub. This guy's writing a foreword for this person. They all have to give radio programs, they have to do all this just to scrape by. They're all scratching each other's backs.

— William S. Burroughs

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More quotes by William S. Burroughs

America is not a young land: it is old and dirty and evil before the settlers, before the Indians. The evil is there waiting.

Naked Lunch (1959)

A paranoid man is a man who knows a little about what's going on.

Friends magazine (1970)

Junk is surrounded by magic and taboos, curses and amulets.

Naked Lunch (1959)

If the right to mind one's own business is recognized, the whole shit disposition is untenable and Hell hath no vociferous fury than an endangered parasite.

The Place Of Dead Roads‎ (1983)

A functioning police state needs no police.

Naked Lunch (1959)

All William S. Burroughs quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: William S. Burroughs (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.