Quote

Most serious writers refuse to make themselves available to the things that technology is doing. I've never been able to understand this sort of fear.

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
Technology
Sort
Understand
Fear
Able
Refuse
Make
Available
Things
Writers
Never
Serious

More quotes by William S. Burroughs

Image
After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it. I sure as hell wouldn't want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military.
William S. Burroughs
Image
I escaped the [Southern-writer] label because I didn't and don't write about the South.
William S. Burroughs
Image
The only way I like to see cops given flowers is in a flower pot from a high window.
William S. Burroughs
Image
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.
William S. Burroughs
Image
Piss off Satan and don't take me for dumber than I look.
William S. Burroughs
Image
I like the idea of generalizing the narcotic thing by making it black meat addiction.
William S. Burroughs
Image
Now all politicians assume a necessity of control, the more efficient the control the better.
William S. Burroughs
Image
Once the law starts asking questions, there's no stopping them.
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
Danger is a very rare commodity in these times, monopolized by intelligence agencies and stuntmen.
William S. Burroughs
Image
Society is cancerous and bureaucracy is its cancer.
William S. Burroughs
Image
I'm definitely antiscientist because I feel that science represents a conspiracy to impose as the real and only universe, the universe of scientists themselves - they're reality-addicts, they've got to have things so real so they can get their hands on it.
William S. Burroughs
Image
Kick is seeing things from a special angle. Kick is momentary freedom from the claims of the aging, cautious, nagging, fightened flesh.
William S. Burroughs
Image
Junk is not, like alcohol or weed, a means to increased enjoyment of life. Junk is not a kick. It is a way of life.
William S. Burroughs
Image
Do not proffer sympathy to the mentally ill it is a bottomless pit. Tell them firmly, I am not paid to listen to this drivel - you are a terminal fool! Otherwise, they make you as crazy as they are.
William S. Burroughs
Image
If you consider any set of data without a preconceived viewpoint, then a viewpoint will emerge from the data.
William S. Burroughs
Image
If everyone is to be made responsible for everything they do, you must extend responsibility beyond the level of conscious intention.
William S. Burroughs
Image
The junk merchant doesn't sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to his product. He does not improve and simplify his merchandise. He degrades and simplifies the client.
William S. Burroughs
Image
Speaking for myself, art differs from writing in that I never know what I'm going to paint until I paint it, so it's almost like automatic writing. A writer, on the other hand, can't help but know what he's going to write, because the activity demands a degree of premeditation.
William S. Burroughs
Image
It is indeed difficult to make a living as a writer, and my advice to anyone contemplating a literary career is to have some other trade.
William S. Burroughs