Quote

If everyone is to be made responsible for everything they do, you must extend responsibility beyond the level of conscious intention.

William S. Burroughs

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Level
Beyond
Levels
Responsibility
Everyone
Extend
Everything
Intention
Must
Responsible
Made
Conscious

More quotes by William S. Burroughs

Image
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
Image
Black magic operates most effectively in preconscious, marginal areas. Casual curses are the most effective.
William S. Burroughs
Image
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
Image
The people in power will not disappear voluntarily, giving flowers to the cops just isn't going to work. This thinking is fostered by the establishment they like nothing better than love and nonviolence. The only way I like to see cops given flowers is in a flower pot from a high window.
William S. Burroughs
Image
An addict never stops growing. Stupider.
William S. Burroughs
Image
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.
William S. Burroughs
Image
when I become death. Death is the seed from which I grow.
William S. Burroughs
Image
Americans have a special horror of giving up control, of letting things happen in their own way without interference.
William S. Burroughs
Image
I feel that opiates - I include opium and all its derivatives, such as morphine, heroin, pantopon, etc. - are quite useless for any sort of creative work, useful though they may be for routine work. Much of the hard physical work in the Far East is done by opium addicts.
William S. Burroughs
Image
I am trying like Klee, to create something that will have a life of its own, that can put me in real danger, a danger which I willingly take on myself.
William S. Burroughs
Image
The nonconformist here may be beat down by life but still has a beauty in his or her longing for freedom and for an awakening of the mind.
William S. Burroughs
Image
It's a tract against capital punishment in the genre of Swift's Modest Proposal. I was simply following a formula to its logical conclusion. Some people appear to have understood it. The publication of Naked Lunch in England practically coincided with their abolition of capital punishment. The book obviously had a certain effect.
William S. Burroughs
Image
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
Image
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
Image
All political movements are basically anti-creative - since a political movement is a form of war.
William S. Burroughs
Image
The study of thinking machines teaches us more about the brain than we can learn by introspective methods. Western man is externalizing himself in the form of gadgets.
William S. Burroughs
Image
Dennis Cooper, God help him, is a born writer.
William S. Burroughs
Image
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
Image
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
Image
To concern yourself with surface political conflicts is to make the mistake of the bull in the ring, you are charging the cloth. That is what politics is for, to teach you the cloth. Just as the bullfighter teaches the bull, teaches him to follow, obey the cloth.
William S. Burroughs