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The dream is a spontaneous happening and therefore dangerous to a control system set-up by the non-dreamers

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
Happening
Therefore
Dangerous
Control
System
Dreamers
Dream
Dreamer
Spontaneous
Happenings

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Truth is used to vitalize a statement rather than devitalize it. Truth implies more than a simple statement of fact. I don't have any whiskey, may be a fact but it is not a truth.
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A junky runs on junk time. When the junk is cut off, the clock runs down and stops. All he can do is hang on and wait for non-junky time to start. A sick junky has no escape from external time, no place to go. He can only wait.
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The line between inner and outer landscapes is breaking down. Earthquakes can result from seismic upheavals within the human mind. The whole random universe of the industrial age is breaking down into cryptic fragments.
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I think all writers write for an audience. There is no such thing as writing for yourself.
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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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After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it.
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You need a good bedside manner with doctors or you will get nowhere.
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If, after spending time with a person, you feel as though you've lost a quart of plasma, avoid that person in the future.
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There's a boy across the river with an ass like a peach alas I was no swimmer and lost my Clementine.
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An addict never stops growing. Stupider.
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Too perfect to be sexually attractive.
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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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I feel that opiates - I include opium and all its derivatives, such as morphine, heroin, pantopon, etc. - are quite useless for any sort of creative work, useful though they may be for routine work. Much of the hard physical work in the Far East is done by opium addicts.
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Man is an artifact designed for space travel. He is not designed to remain in his present biologic state any more than a tadpole is designed to remain a tadpole.
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.
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Panic is the sudden realization that everything around you is alive.
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Strip your psyche to the bare bones of spontaneous process, and you give yourself one chance in a thousand to make the Pass.
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I wasn't exposed to art as I was growing up, and can't recall the first time I saw a work of art. However, I remember very clearly a vision I had of a little green reindeer when I was a child, and visions emanate from the same mythical area where painting resides. Whatever the reason, I immediately felt comfortable working with visual materials.
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Thinking is not enough. Nothing is. There is no final enough of wisdom, experience — any f...ing thing.
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A doctor is not criticized for describing the manifestations and symptoms of an illness, even though the symptoms may be disgusting. I feel that a writer has the right to the same freedom In fact, I think that the time has come for the line between literature and science, a purely arbitrary line, to be erased.
William S. Burroughs