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In the U.S., you have to be a deviant or die of boredom.
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
Deviant
Deviants
Boredom
Dies
More quotes by William S. Burroughs
Man must get away from verbal forms to attain the consciousness, that which is there to be perceived at hand.
William S. Burroughs
Whether you like it or not, you are committed to the human endeavor. I cannot ally myself with such a purely negative goal as avoidance of suffering. Suffering is a chance you take by the fact of being alive.
William S. Burroughs
A paranoid is someone who has all the facts.
William S. Burroughs
The forward step must be made in silence. We detach ourselves from word forms - this can be accomplished by substituting for words, letters, concepts, verbal concepts, other modes of expressions: for example, color.
William S. Burroughs
A John is different from a sucker. When you're with a sucker you're on alert all the time. You give him nothing. A sucker is just to be taken but a John is different. You give him what he pays for. When you're with him you enjoy yourself and you want him to enjoy himself too.
William S. Burroughs
[Death is] a gimmick. It's the time-birth-death gimmick. Can't go on much longer, too many people are wising up.
William S. Burroughs
That old feeling is still in my leaking heart.
William S. Burroughs
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
Thinking is not enough. Nothing is. There is no final enough of wisdom, experience — any f...ing thing.
William S. Burroughs
Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer.
William S. Burroughs
I detest limitations of any kind, and intend to establish my ass some place where I am a virgin on the police blotter.
William S. Burroughs
Tell Allen I plead guilty to vampirism and other crimes against life. But I love him and nothing else cancels love.
William S. Burroughs
England has the most sordid literary scene I've ever seen. They all meet in the same pub. This guy's writing a foreword for this person. They all have to give radio programs, they have to do all this just in order to scrape by. They're all scratching each other's backs.
William S. Burroughs
Take a shot in front of D.L. Probing for a vein in my dirty bare foot... Junkies have no shame... They are impervious to the repugnance of others. It is doubtful if shame can exist in the absence of sexual libido... The junky's shame disappears with his nonsexual sociability which is also dependent on libido.
William S. Burroughs
The best way to keep something bad from happening is to see it ahead of time... and you can't see it if you refuse to face the possibility.
William S. Burroughs
Well, disgusting doesn't refer to the books but to the subjective reaction of the person making the complaint. I don't think that anything is disgusting per se. These words disgusting and filthy, etc., have prevented us from undertaking any scientific experimentation in sexual matters.
William S. Burroughs
Time: a landing field! Death needs time like a junkie needs junk.
William S. Burroughs
When all lies, deceit, pretense is stripped away, what remains? The truth of a painting, or a book or a man.
William S. Burroughs
The photo collage is a way to travel that must be used with skill and precision if we are to arrive... The collage as a flexible hieroglyph language of juxtaposition: A collage makes a statement.
William S. Burroughs
Once the law starts asking questions, there's no stopping them.
William S. Burroughs
