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Hemingway was a prisoner of his style. No one can talk like the characters in Hemingway except the characters in Hemingway. His style in the wildest sense finally killed him.
William S. Burroughs
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I read Mailer's Ancient Evenings with great interest because I was interested in... the seven souls structure, which was very helpful to me in Western Lands. And also in Place of Dead Roads. So that's Mailer.
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Rock and Roll adolescent hoodlums storm the streets of all nations. They rush into the Louvre and throw acid in the Mona Lisa's face.
William S. Burroughs
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There's a book called Mummy and the people actually seem to have become addicted to mummy dust. And mummy dust was somehow made from people who've died of the most loathsome diseases. It's too bad that [David] Cronenberg didn't see this book, see I only saw it after the film was made. It might have been of interest to him.
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Look at these poisonous color maps where flesh trees grow from human sacrifices; listen to these sniggering half-heard words of tenderness and doom from lips spotted with decay
William S. Burroughs
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You were given the power to love in order to use it, no matter what pain it may cause you.
William S. Burroughs
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My greatest strength is to have a great capacity to confront myself no matter how unpleasant. My greatest weakness is that I don't. I know that's enigmatic, but that's sort of a general formula for anyone, actually.
William S. Burroughs
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The young are an alien species. They won't replace us by revolution. They will forget and ignore us out of existence.
William S. Burroughs
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When people start talking about their bowel movements, they are inexorable as the processes of which they speak.
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Remember the Italian steward who put on women's clothes and so filched a seat in a lifeboat? A cur in human shape, certainly he was born and saved to set a new standard by which to judge infamy and shame.
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I had the feeling that some horrible image was just beyond the field of vision, moving, as I turned my head, so that I never quite saw it.
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Consider the impasse of a one-God universe. He is all-knowing and all-powerful. He can't go anywhere, since He is already everywhere. He can't do anything, since the act of doing presupposes opposition. His universe is irrevocably thermodynamic, having no friction by definition. So, He has to create friction: War, Fear, Sickness, Death, to keep his dying show on the road.
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The dream is a spontaneous happening and therefore dangerous to a control system set-up by the non-dreamers
William S. Burroughs
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What are Americans? We've got everything from sharecroppers to atomic physicist here, and there's certainly no uniformity in their thought processes. There's very little they have in common. In fact, Americans should we say, have less in common than any other nationality.
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Kerouac opened a million coffee bars and sold a million pairs of Levis to both sexes. Woodstock rises from his pages.
William S. Burroughs
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Cut word lines — Cut music lines — Smash the control images — Smash the control machine — Burn the books — Kill the priests — Kill! Kill! Kill!
William S. Burroughs
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Danger is a very rare commodity in these times, monopolized by intelligence agencies and
stuntmen.
William S. Burroughs
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I prefer cats to people, for the most part. Most people aren't cute, & if they are cute they rapidly outgrow it
William S. Burroughs
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I am not one of those weak-spirited, sappy Americans who want to be liked by all the people around them. I don't care if people hate my guts; I assume most of them do. The important question is whether they are in a position to do anything about it. My affections, being concentrated over a few people, are not spread all over Hell in a vile attempt to placate sulky, worthless shits.
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Home is where your ass is and if you want to move you move your ass the first step is learning to change homes with someone else and have someone else's ass.
William S. Burroughs
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I don't have any politics. I feel that as soon as politics arises, things are already in a hopeless state of deterioration.
William S. Burroughs
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My general theory since 1971 has been that the word is literally a virus, and that it has not been recognized as such because it has achieved a state of relatively stable symbiosis with its human host; that is to say, the word virus (the other Half) has established itself so firmly as an accepted part of the human organism that it can now sneer at gangster viruses like smallpox and turn them in to the Pasteur Institute.
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The whole point is, I feel the machine should be eliminated. Now that it has served its purpose of alerting us to the dangers of machine control.
William S. Burroughs
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If a weaker baboon be attacked by a stronger baboon the weaker baboon will either (a) present his hrump fanny I believe is the word, gentlemen, heh heh for passive intercourse or (b) if he is a different type baboon more extrovert and well-adjusted, lead an attack on an even weaker baboon if he can find one.
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Yes, for all of us in the Shakespeare Squadron, writing is just that: not an escape from reality, but an attempt to change reality.
William S. Burroughs
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Quote of the day
Autumn burned brightly, a running flame through the mountains, a torch flung to the trees.
Faith Baldwin
William S. Burroughs
Born:
February 5, 1914
Died:
August 2, 1997
(aged 83)
Bio:
William Seward Burroughs II was an American novelist, short story writer, satirist, essayist, painter, and spoken word performer.
Known for:
Naked Lunch (1959)
Junkie (1953)
The Soft Machine (1961)
Cities of the Red Night (1981)
Nova Express (1964)
Most used words:
junk
people
life
human
control
writing
virus
matter
time
kill
eyes
mind
man
dream
love
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