William S. Burroughs Quotes

I don't want to be the guy who sits on a front porch with a mint julep in his hand and rocks his life away.

The biggest trap, the biggest dungeon in life isn't laziness or bad luck, it's comfort.

You try to figure out things to keep yourself interested. It's very easy to get lulled.

When you're feeling very comfortable with an actor, you are doing nothing.

I believe that when things are easy, people stay dormant.

Beware of monotony; it's the mother of all the deadly sins.

Nothing is more uninteresting than completely knowing somebody, being totally at ease.

I think sometimes with experience, it brings a sense of laziness and complacency. I try not to get complacent.

You never want to be too comfortable because that's when you start to get complacent and start doing those little stupid things and getting too relaxed.

When something is working well, it becomes too easy to let things run themselves.

Nobody has ever thought himself to death. The chief danger confronting us is not age. It is laziness, sloth, routine, stupidity, - forcing their way in like wind through the shutters, seeping into the cellar like swamp water.

It's supposed to feel totally foreign [to play in a series], every single time. But, going back for another go at it is good, on the one hand, but it's also bad, on another hand, because your ideas dry up sometimes, and also you get lazy sometimes because you're around the same people.

Taking it easy is often the prelude to backsliding. Comfort precedes collapse.

Habit and routine have an unbelievable power to waste and destroy.

Men fall into a routine when they are tired and slack: it has all the appearance of activity with few of its burdens.

Routine feeds the illusion of safety.

Tradition is laziness.

I suppose the most important thing is to stay interested. It's very easy in life if you get to a place where you're successful to hit the same groove on the record player over and over again because it's safe.

Comfort can be a dangerous thing. You stick around home all the time where it’s safe and nothing ever changes, and before you know it, you get set in your ways and you quit learning, you quit changing, you don’t grow anymore.

If I don't have anything to do all day, I might not even put my pants on.

Easy roads make sleepy travellers.

Boredom flourishes too, when you feel safe. It's a symptom of security.

One must always be careful not to let one's work be covered with moss.

What Turning Forty Means to Me I need to take my pants off as soon as I get home. I didn't used to have to do that. But now I do.

The evolution from happiness to habit is one of death's best weapons.