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Cheat your landlord if you can -- and must -- but do not try to shortchange the Muse.
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
Must
Trying
Shortchange
Landlord
Muse
Cheat
Change
More quotes by William S. Burroughs
If the mortality rate seems high we must realize that Nature is a ruthless teacher. There are no second chances in Mother Nature's Survival Course.
William S. Burroughs
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?
William S. Burroughs
I'm creating an imaginary — it's always imaginary — world in which I would like to live.
William S. Burroughs
Like Spain, I am bound to the past.
William S. Burroughs
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
The beautiful disease and The government falls along the weed rooms flesh along the weed government.
William S. Burroughs
Cats didn't start as mousers. Weasels and snakes and dogs are more efficient as rodent-control agents. I postulate that cats started as psychic companions, as Familiars, and have never deviated from this function.
William S. Burroughs
I think Judge Learned Hand was a cultured, intelligent man.
William S. Burroughs
There's a boy across the river with an ass like a peach alas I was no swimmer and lost my Clementine.
William S. Burroughs
No body of knowledge needs an organizational policy. Organizational policy can only impede the advancement of knowledge. There is a basic incompatibility between any organization and freedom of thought.
William S. Burroughs
The face of evil is always the face of total need.
William S. Burroughs
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
Once the law starts asking questions, there's no stopping them.
William S. Burroughs
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
Language is a virus from outer space.
William S. Burroughs
Every word is autobiographical, and every word is fiction.
William S. Burroughs
Junk is the ideal product... the ultimate merchandise. No sales talk necessary. The client will crawl through a sewer and beg to buy.
William S. Burroughs
The purpose of my writing is to expose and arrest Nova Criminals.
William S. Burroughs
It is to be remembered that the origin of all the arts-music, painting and writing-is magical and evocative and that magic is always used to obtain some definite result.
William S. Burroughs
Look at these poisonous color maps where flesh trees grow from human sacrifices listen to these sniggering half-heard words of tenderness and doom from lips spotted with decay
William S. Burroughs
