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Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing.

William S. Burroughs

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William S. Burroughs
Age: 83 †
Born: 1914
Born: February 5
Died: 1997
Died: August 11
Essayist
Novelist
Painter
Photographer
Poet
Prosaist
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Writer
St. Louis
Missouri
William Seward Burroughs II
Uilʹi︠a︡m Berrouz
William Lee
William Burroughs
Ouiliam Baroouz
William Seward Burroughs
Willy Lee
William S. (William Seward) Burroughs
Introvert
Frightening
Scary
Silent
Communication
Silence
People
Compulsively
Introspection

More quotes by William S. Burroughs

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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.
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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If the soft machine works, don't fix it. If it works, don't fix it.
William S. Burroughs
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There's a boy across the river with an ass like a peach alas I was no swimmer and lost my Clementine.
William S. Burroughs
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Life is a vacation from two eternities.
William S. Burroughs
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A consumer society is about simplfying and degrading the consumer as well as the product.
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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You see, should I stand in front of a landscape and paint it, I'm completely ignoring the factor of time. While I am painting it, it's changing, clouds are changing, all sorts of things. So there's the myth there of someone creating in a timeless vacuum.
William S. Burroughs
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Who was I? The stranger was footsteps in the snow a long time ago.
William S. Burroughs
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Cat hate reflects an ugly, stupid, loutish, bigoted spirit. There can be no compromise with this Ugly Spirit.
William S. Burroughs
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I began to get a feeling familiar to me from my bartending days of being the only sane man in a nuthouse. It doesn't make you feel superior but depressed and scared, because there is nobody you can contact.
William S. Burroughs
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Forward steps are made by giving up old armor because words are built into you - in the soft typewriter of the womb you do not realize the word-armor you carry for example, when you read this page your eyes move irresistibly from left to right following the words that you have been accustomed to.
William S. Burroughs
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Now what sort of man or woman or monster would stroke a centipede I have ever seen? And here is my good big centipede! If such a man exists, I say kill him without more ado. He is a traitor to the human race.
William S. Burroughs
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I knew [Timothy] Leary, but barely knew, didn't really know Jan [Kerouac].
William S. Burroughs
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If you weren't surprised by your life you wouldn't be alive. Life is surprise.
William S. Burroughs
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The idea that anyone can use drugs and escape a horrible fate is anathema to these idiots. I predict in the near future right-wingers will use drug hysteria as a pretext to set up an international police apparatus.
William S. Burroughs
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In my writing I am acting as a map maker, an explorer of psychic areas, a cosmonaut of inner space, and I see no point in exploring areas that have already been thoroughly surveyed.
William S. Burroughs
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A John is different from a sucker. When you're with a sucker you're on alert all the time. You give him nothing. A sucker is just to be taken but a John is different. You give him what he pays for. When you're with him you enjoy yourself and you want him to enjoy himself too.
William S. Burroughs
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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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Writing prejudicial, off-putting reviews is a precise exercise in applied black magic. The reviewer can draw free-floating disagreeable associations to a book by implying that the book is completely unimportant without saying exactly why, and carefully avoiding any clear images that could capture the reader's full attention.
William S. Burroughs