Hustlers of the world, there is one mark you cannot beat: the mark inside.
Interpretation
True success comes from within and cannot be overshadowed by external achievements.
In this quote, William S. Burroughs emphasizes that no matter how skilled or competitive one may be in the external world, the most significant accomplishment is achieving self-awareness and inner peace. This highlights the importance of introspection and the recognition that external validation and success are meaningless without inner fulfillment and acknowledgment of one's own potential.
In practice
During a motivational speech about personal growth.
God save the Queen and a fascist regime β¦ a flabby toothless fascism, to be sure. Never go too far in any direction, is the basic law on which Limey-Land is built. The Queen stabilizes the whole sinking shithouse and keeps a small elite of wealth and privilege on top. The English have gone soft in the outhouse. England is like some stricken beast too stupid to know it is dead. Ingloriously foundering in its own waste products, the backlash and bad karma of empire
Like most qualities, cuteness is delineated by what it isn't. Most people aren't cute at all, or if so they quickly outgrow their cuteness ... Elegance, grace, delicacy, beauty, and a lack of self-consciousness: a creature who knows he is cute soon isn't.
There is nothing more provocative than minding your own business.
Gentle reader, the Fountain of Youth is radioactive, and those who imbibe its poisonous heavy waters will suffer the hideous fate of decaying metal. Yet almost without exception, the wretched idiot inhabitants of our benighted planet would gulp down this radioactive excrement if it were offered.
Language is a virus from outer space.
One very important aspect of art is that it makes people aware of what they know and donβt know they know... Once the breakthrough is made, there is a permanent expansion of awareness. But there is always a reaction of rage, of outrage, at the first breakthrough... So the artist, then, expands awareness. And once the breakthrough is made, this becomes part of the general awareness.
I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can't find anybody who can tell me what they want.
Doubt must be no more than vigilance, otherwise it can become dangerous.
Every man feels instinctively that all the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.
What one writer can make in the solitude of one room is something no power can easily destroy.
Because ideas have to be original only with regard to their adaptation to the problem at hand, I am always extremely interested in how others have used used them.
If you're interested in opening the doors to the heavens, start with the door to your own secret self. See what happens when you offer to another a glimpse of who you truly are. When your heart is undefended, you make it safe for whomever you meet to put down his burden of hiding, and then you both can walk through the open door.
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