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Happinessis a byproduct of function. Those who seek happiness for itself seek victory without war.

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
Victory
Function
Conflict
Purpose
Happiness
War
Without
Byproduct
Seek

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If, after spending time with a person, you feel as though you've lost a quart of plasma, avoid that person in the future.
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I think if a writer is not endeavoring to expand and alter consciousness in himself and in his readers, he is not doing much of anything. It is precisely words, word lines, lines of words and images, and associations connected with these word and image lines in the brain, that keep you in present time, right where you are sitting now.
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Hemingway said: 'It don't come anymore.' So where did it go?
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I miss you so much your absence causes me, at times, accute pain. I don't mean sexually. I mean in connection with my writing.
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If I knew how much you loved me, I would’ve shot you sooner.
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It is indeed difficult to make a living as a writer, and my advice to anyone contemplating a literary career is to have some other trade.
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what a horrible loutish planet this is. the dominant species consists of sadistic morons, faces bearing the hideous lineaments of spiritual famine swollen with stupid hate. hopeless rubbish.
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[Jack] Kerouac was writing fiction. What he did when he wrote about me...he made me out with Russian Countesses and Swiss accounts and other things I didn't have or didn't happen and so on.
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Hustlers of the world, there is one mark you cannot beat: the mark inside.
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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.
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Virtue is simply happiness, and happiness is a by-product of function. You are happy when you are functioning.
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I know that Nature designs that this whole continent, not merely these thirty-six states, shall be, sooner or later, within the magic circle of the American union.
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You must learn to exist with no religion, no country, no allies. You must learn to live alone in silence.
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We should exterminate all rational thought.
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Addiction is a disease of exposure. Doctors and nurses, for instance, have a high addiction rate.
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I have no message to give the politicians of the world. They're all completely addicted to promiscuous verbalization and I'm quite sure they would not be at all interested in hearing about cut-ups and hieroglyphics and still less interested to hear about silence.
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Which came first the intestine or the tapeworm?
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Life is a vacation from two eternities, who wants to waste those precious years worrying about what happens when you get back to forever?
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In deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality.
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