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Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative.

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
Relative
Knowledge
Going
Superficial

More quotes by William S. Burroughs

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Quien sabe? Not me. The older I get the less I sabe, the less wisdom, maturity and caution I have.
William S. Burroughs
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The exact objectives of Islam Inc. are obscure. Needless to say everyone involved has a different angle, and they all intend to cross each other up somewhere along the line.
William S. Burroughs
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We are setting out to create new worlds, new beings, new modes of consciousness.
William S. Burroughs
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Humility is indeed beatness, a compulsory virtue that no one exhibits unless he has to.
William S. Burroughs
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The world wasn't a more tolerant place when I was a young man. Rather, they simply sidestepped all the issues.
William S. Burroughs
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[Political movements] both favor alcohol and are against pot.
William S. Burroughs
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Thinking is not enough. Nothing is. There is no final enough of wisdom, experience — any f...ing thing.
William S. Burroughs
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The cat does not offer services. The cat offers itself. Of course he wants care and shelter. You don't buy love for nothing.
William S. Burroughs
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Whatever happened to God's justice? I am convinced that God exist and God is one asshole.
William S. Burroughs
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If you consider any set of data without a preconceived viewpoint, then a viewpoint will emerge from the data.
William S. Burroughs
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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.
William S. Burroughs
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Changes... can only be effected by alterations in the original. The only thing not prerecorded in a prerecorded universe are the prerecordings themselves. The copies can only repeat themselves word for word. A virus is a copy. You can pretty it up, cut it up, scramble it - it will reassemble in the same form.
William S. Burroughs
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(1) Never give anything away for nothing. (2) Never give more than you have to give (always catch the buyer hungry and always make him wait). (3) Always take everything back if you possibly can.
William S. Burroughs
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Madness is confusion of levels of fact. . . . Madness is not seeing visions but confusing levels.
William S. Burroughs
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I had not taken a bath in a year nor changed my clothes or removed them except to stick a needle every hour in the fibrous grey wooden flesh of heroin addiction. I did absolutely nothing.
William S. Burroughs
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I feel that any form of so called psychotherapy is strongly contraindicated for addicts. The question Why did you start using narcotics in the first place? should never be asked. It is quite as irrelevant to treatment as it would be to ask a malarial patient why he went to a malarial area.
William S. Burroughs
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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.
William S. Burroughs
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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.
William S. Burroughs
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If the mortality rate seems high we must realize that Nature is a ruthless teacher. There are no second chances in Mother Nature's Survival Course.
William S. Burroughs
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I see no reason why the artistic world can't absolutely merge with Madison Avenue. Pop art is a move in that direction. Why can't we have advertisements with beautiful words and beautiful images?
William S. Burroughs