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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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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
Always
Like
People
Offbeat
Suburbs
Neat
Attracted

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The dream is a spontaneous happening and therefore dangerous to a control system set-up by the non-dreamers
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My characters are quite as real to me as so-called real people which is one reason why I'm not subject to what is known as loneliness. I have plenty of company.
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Modern man has lost the option of silence.
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The most deadly picture is a picture of nothing at all. The colors are there, but there is no image, nothing.
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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.
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Tell the truth once and for all and shut up forever.
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Kerouac opened a million coffee bars and sold a million pairs of Levis to both sexes. Woodstock rises from his pages.
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In this world, [of Flash and Filigree] nothing is true, and censure or outrage is simply irrelevant.
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If you are asking me what the individual can do right now, in a political sense, I'd have to say he can't do all that much. Speaking for myself, I am more concerned with the transformation of the individual, which to me is much more important than the so-called political revolution.
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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.
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Fear of death is form of stasis horrors. The dead weight of time.
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For God's sake, keep your eyes open. Notice what's going on around you.
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Madness is confusion of levels of fact. . . . Madness is not seeing visions but confusing levels.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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
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Belief is a meaningless word. What does it mean? I believe something. Okay, now you have someone who is hearing voices and believes in these voices. It doesn't mean they have any necessary reality. Your whole concept of your I is an illusion. You have to give something called an I before you speak of what the I believes.
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I am getting so far out one day I won't come back at all.
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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