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William S. Burroughs Quotes
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Man is an artifact designed for space travel. He is not designed to remain in his present biologic state any more than a tadpole is designed to remain a tadpole.
William S. Burroughs
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There is nothing more provocative than minding your own business.
William S. Burroughs
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Americans have a special horror of giving up control, of letting things happen in their own way without interference.
William S. Burroughs
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I think that what we call love is a fraud perpetrated by the female sex, and that the point of sexual relations between men is nothing that we could call love, but rather what we might call recognition.
William S. Burroughs
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I am not a person and I am not an animal. There is something I am here for something I must do before I can go.
William S. Burroughs
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As soon as you know you are in prison, you have a possibility to escape.
William S. Burroughs
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The idea that addiction is somehow a psychological illness is, I think, totally ridiculous. It's as psychological as malaria. It's a matter of exposure. People, generally speaking, will take any intoxicant or any drug that gives them a pleasant effect if it is available to them.
William S. Burroughs
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Tangier is one of the few places left in the world where, so long as you don't proceed to robbery, violence, or some form of crude, antisocial behavior, you can do exactly what you want.
William S. Burroughs
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Tea heads are gregarious, they are sensitive, and they are paranoiac. If you get to be known as a "drag" or a "bring down," you can't do business with them.
William S. Burroughs
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Hustlers of the world, there is one Mark you cannot beat: The Mark Inside.
William S. Burroughs
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Junk is the ideal product…the ultimate merchandise. No sales talk necessary. The client will crawl through a sewer and beg to buy.
William S. Burroughs
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Love? What is it? Most natural painkiller what there is. LOVE.
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.
William S. Burroughs
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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.
William S. Burroughs
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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.
William S. Burroughs
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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.
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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.
William S. Burroughs
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Quote of the day
We owe something to extravagance, for thrift and adventure seldom go hand in hand.
Lady Randolph Churchill
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
William S. Burroughs on Wikipedia
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