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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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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
Around
Message
Going
Messages
People
Sake
Writers
Open
Eyes
Eye
Principal
Keep
Notice

More quotes by William S. Burroughs

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in the magical universe there are no coincidences and there are no accidents. nothing happens unless someone wills it to happen
William S. Burroughs
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If you talk you always end up with politics, it gets nowhere. I mean man it's strictly from the soft typewriter.
William S. Burroughs
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When people start talking about their bowel movements, they are inexorable as the processes of which they speak.
William S. Burroughs
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Open your mind and let the pictures out
William S. Burroughs
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Last night I woke up with someone squeezing my hand. It was my other hand.
William S. Burroughs
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In the event of atomic war there is a tremendous biological advantage in the so-called undeveloped areas that have a high birth rate and high death rate because, man, they can plow under those mutations.
William S. Burroughs
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The only possible ethic is to do what one wants to do.
William S. Burroughs
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I think anybody incapable of changing his mind is crazy.
William S. Burroughs
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NOTHING happens by coincidence.
William S. Burroughs
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Danger is a very rare commodity in these times, monopolized by intelligence agencies and stuntmen.
William S. Burroughs
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Sexual arousal results from the repetition and impact of image.
William S. Burroughs
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Life is a cutup. And to pretend that you write or paint in a timeless vacuum is just simply . . . not . . . true, not in accord with the facts of human perception.
William S. Burroughs
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Some of us are sixty feet long with a brain the size of a walnut.
William S. Burroughs
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Happinessis a byproduct of function. Those who seek happiness for itself seek victory without war.
William S. Burroughs
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The Federal Narcotics Bureau does a grave disservice by disseminating a lot of misinformation. Most of what they say is such nonsense that I didn't believe them about addiction.
William S. Burroughs
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There's no place for impractical dreamers around here.
William S. Burroughs
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The face of evil is always the face of total need.
William S. Burroughs
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I'm creating an imaginary — it's always imaginary — world in which I would like to live.
William S. Burroughs
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There is nothing one fears more or is more ashamed of than not being oneself. Yet few people realize even an approximation of their true potential. Most people must live with varying degrees of the shame and fear of not being fully in control of themselves.
William S. Burroughs
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Given certain known factors in an equation and the equation comprising a situation of absolute need - any form of need - you can predict the results. Leave a sick junkie in the back room of a drugstore and only one result is possible.
William S. Burroughs