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The best way to keep something bad from happening is to see it ahead of time... and you can't see it if you refuse to face the possibility.

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
Keep
Foresight
Reality
Ahead
Best
Happenings
Something
Happening
Way
Refuse
Time
Possibility
Face
Faces

More quotes by William S. Burroughs

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(1) Never give anything away for nothing. (2) Never give more than you have to give (always catch the buyer hungry and always make him wait). (3) Always take everything back if you possibly can.
William S. Burroughs
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[Death is] a gimmick. It's the time-birth-death gimmick. Can't go on much longer, too many people are wising up.
William S. Burroughs
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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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Writing prejudicial, off-putting reviews is a precise exercise in applied black magic. The reviewer can draw free-floating disagreeable associations to a book by implying that the book is completely unimportant without saying exactly why, and carefully avoiding any clear images that could capture the reader's full attention.
William S. Burroughs
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The only way I like to see cops given flowers is in a flower pot from a high window.
William S. Burroughs
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The people in power will not disappear voluntarily, giving flowers to the cops just isn't going to work. This thinking is fostered by the establishment they like nothing better than love and nonviolence. The only way I like to see cops given flowers is in a flower pot from a high window.
William S. Burroughs
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Jesus Christ said 'by their fruits ye shall know them,' not by their disclaimers.
William S. Burroughs
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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.
William S. Burroughs
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Madness is confusion of levels of fact. . . . Madness is not seeing visions but confusing levels.
William S. Burroughs
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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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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.
William S. Burroughs
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when I become death. Death is the seed from which I grow.
William S. Burroughs
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Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape.
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's a boy across the river with an ass like a peach alas I was no swimmer and lost my Clementine.
William S. Burroughs
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Quien sabe? Not me. The older I get the less I sabe, the less wisdom, maturity and caution I have.
William S. Burroughs
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Now all politicians assume a necessity of control, the more efficient the control the better.
William S. Burroughs
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As soon as you have a problem, it's insoluble. These things should never have been allowed to happen.
William S. Burroughs
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[Political movements] both favor alcohol and are against pot.
William S. Burroughs
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There couldn't be a society of people who didn't dream. They'd be dead in two weeks.
William S. Burroughs