A paranoid might be defined as someone who has some idea as to what is actually going on.

—William S. Burroughs

There are countless variants of this quote found online, almost always given with no attribution. The quote above comes from a 1970 interview called "Inspector J. Lee of the Nova Police," collected in the volume Burroughs Live: The Collected Interviews 1960-1997.

Interestingly, later in that same book he is quoted as saying:

I never made that remark about paranoia, though I guess somebody must have made it.

This comes from a 1982 interview with Alan Bold.

It is not clear why Burroughs denied his original statement. It is possible that the first quote was repeated so many times, and so inaccurately, that he simply forgot and felt it was someone else's line, incorrectly attributed to him. His words had, somewhat ironically, been cut up by others, meaning they were no longer his own.

Photo from the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, 1984.