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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
Mind
Smallpox
World
Virus
Viruses
Caused
Folks

More quotes by William S. Burroughs

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All abilities are paid for with disabilities. perfect health may entail the heavy toll of bovine stupidity. insight into one area involves blind spots in another.
William S. Burroughs
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I think Judge Learned Hand was a cultured, intelligent man.
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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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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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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Mr. Bradley-Mr. Martin is two people because it is a statement of the impasse of dualistic universe which he has created, they have created. I think that any dualistic universe ends in Nova. Mr. Bradley-Mr. Martin is a kind of God. A God of stupidity, cowardice, ugliness.
William S. Burroughs
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When all lies, deceit, pretense is stripped away, what remains? The truth of a painting, or a book or a man.
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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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.
William S. Burroughs
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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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Which came first the intestine or the tapeworm?
William S. Burroughs
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This is a war universe. War all the time. There may be other universes, but ours seems to be based on war and games.
William S. Burroughs
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Once the law starts asking questions, there's no stopping them.
William S. Burroughs
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Like pregnant women lose their teeth feeding the stranger, junkies lose their yellow fangs feeding the monkey.
William S. Burroughs
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You can't fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.
William S. Burroughs
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Criminal law is one of the few professions where the client buys someone else's luck. The luck of most people is strictly non-transferrable. But a good criminal lawyer can sell all his luck to a client, and the more luck he sells the more he has to sell.
William S. Burroughs
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Most people don't see what's going on around them. That's my principal message to writers: 'For God's sake, keep your eyes open. Notice what's going on around you.'
William S. Burroughs
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Like many nonconformist and beat generation writers, William S. Burroughs takes the outcasts of society as his theme.
William S. Burroughs
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There isn't a feeling you can get on drugs that you can't get without drugs.
William S. Burroughs
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The beautiful disease and The government falls along the weed rooms flesh along the weed government.
William S. Burroughs