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Most of the trouble in this world has been caused by folks who can't mind their own business, because they have no business of their own to mind, any more than a smallpox virus has.

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
Atheism
Trouble
Business
Smallpox
Mind
Virus
World
Viruses
Caused
Folks

More quotes by William S. Burroughs

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Victimless crimes are the lifeline of the RIGHT virus. And there is a growing recognition, even in official quarters, that victimless crimes should be removed from the books or subject to minimal penalties.
William S. Burroughs
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And there are my cats, engaged in a ritual that goes back thousands of years, tranquilly licking themselves after the meal. Practical animals, they prefer to have others provide the food ... some of them do. There must have been a split between the cats who accepted domestication and those who did not.
William S. Burroughs
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Some people like neat suburbs. I always am attracted to the rundown and the old and the offbeat.
William S. Burroughs
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There couldn't be a society of people who didn't dream. They'd be dead in two weeks.
William S. Burroughs
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There is only one thing a writer can write about: what is in front of his senses at the moment of writing... I am a recording instrument... I do not presume to impose story plot continuity... Insofar as I succeed in Direct recording of certain areas of psychic process I may have limited function... I am not an entertainer.
William S. Burroughs
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Faced by the actual practice of freedom, the French and American revolutions would be forced to stand by their words.
William S. Burroughs
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Cheat your landlord if you can -- and must -- but do not try to shortchange the Muse.
William S. Burroughs
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If everyone is to be made responsible for everything they do, you must extend responsibility beyond the level of conscious intention.
William S. Burroughs
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All writing is in fact cut-ups. A collage of words read heard overheard. What else?
William S. Burroughs
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Dennis Cooper, God help him, is a born writer.
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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A writer does not own words any more than a painter owns colors. So lets dispense with this originality fetish… Look, listen and transcribe and forget about being original.
William S. Burroughs
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First there was a young guy sitting in front of television in a T-shirt drinking beer with his mother, then there was an older fatter person sitting in front of television in a T-shirt drinking beer with his mother.
William S. Burroughs
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If you build a good name, eventually, that name will be its own currency.
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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Build a good name. Keep your name clean. Don't make compromises. Don't worry about making a bunch of money or being successful. Be concerned with doing good work and make the right choices and protect your work. And if you can build a good name, eventually, that name will be its own currency.
William S. Burroughs
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Dream long enough and dream hard enough you will come to know dreaming can make it so.
William S. Burroughs
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So many people in the Western World are just automatically made ill by any sort of frank writing about sexual matters.
William S. Burroughs
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Death needs time for what it kills to grow in.
William S. Burroughs
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I'm against Capitol Punishment in all forms, and I have written many pamphlets on this subject in the manner of Swift's Modest Proposal pamphlet incorporated into Naked Lunch these pamphlets have marked Naked Lunch as an obscene book.
William S. Burroughs