Nobody owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death.

The line hinges on a stark asymmetry: life is not a possession—no one can fully control, guarantee, or “own” it—whereas death can be seized and administered with crude immediacy. The homely “frying pan” collapses the distance between everyday domesticity and lethal force, suggesting how thin the veneer of civilization is and how readily violence can erupt from ordinary circumstances. In Burroughs’s typical register, the aphorism reads as a cynical comment on power: institutions and individuals may claim authority over life, but the most absolute, democratized power is the capacity to kill. It also implies a grim moral: control is often an illusion until it becomes destructive.