A Quote by William S. Burroughs

Madness is confusion of levels of fact. . . . Madness is not seeing visions but confusing levels.

William S. Burroughs

Quote Topics

Confusing Confusion Fact Levels Madness Seeing Visions

Quote Author

William S. Burroughs
American - Writer
February 5, 1914 - August 2, 1997

I think the big danger of madness is not madness itself, but the habit of madness. What I discovered during the time I spent in the asylum is that I could choose madness and spend my whole life without working, doing nothing, pretending to be mad. It was a very strong temptation.

Paulo Coelho

In an age of madness, to expect to be untouched by madness is a form of madness. But the pursuit of sanity can be a form of madness, too

Saul Bellow

I don't keep a record of the parts I've played, and I don't compare characters, but maybe I should? I could construct a graphic that grades badness and madness levels? Interesting idea.

James Frain

If angels stoop from visions of more than earthly beauty to spells of less than earthly worth, they are but fallen angels, mingling divine utterances with the babblings of madness, and the madness is not the divineness.

Edwin Hubbel Chapin

I wanted to see something in full daylight; I was sated with the pleasure and comfort of the half light; I had the same desire for the daylight as for water and air. And if seeing was fire, I required the plenitude of fire, and if seeing would infect me with madness, I madly wanted that madness.

Maurice Blanchot

Artists are part of the information process... Visual history is important in providing a record of what is going on - levels of intention, levels of confidence, levels of aggression or control.

Leon Golub

When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical may be madness. To surrender dreams, this may be madness ...Maddest of all is to see life as it is and not as it should be.

Miguel de Cervantes

When you get to the fourth, fifth and sixth years of a show, it's really good to have held back, so that you have somewhere to go. That also applies to levels of violence, levels of humor, levels of production value.

Bruno Heller

Here at CBS, spring also means March Madness. I love the name March Madness. I'm glad the PC police haven't made us change March Madness to early spring psychosis.

Craig Ferguson

You have to quit confusing a madness with a mission.

Flannery O'Connor

Each sex has a relation to madness. Every desire has a relation to madness. But it would seem that one desire has been taken as wisdom, moderation, truth, leaving to the other sex the weight of a madness that cannot be acknowledged or accommodated.

Luce Irigaray

Madness, provided it comes as the gift of heaven, is the channel by which we receive the greatest blessings... the men of old who gave things their names saw no disgrace or reproach in madness; otherwise they would not have connected it with the name of the noblest of arts, the art of discerning the future, and called it the manic art... So, according to the evidence provided by our ancestors, madness is a nobler thing than sober sense... madness comes from God, whereas sober sense is merely human.

Plato

I am madness maddened! That wild madness that's only calm to comprehend itself

Herman Melville

If I'm just trying to get to different levels... and it takes levels to get to levels, and I just have to do what I have to do to keep on climbing the charts and getting where I need to be.