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as soon as you know you are in prison, you have a possibility to escape.

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
Escape
Prison
Soon
Possibility

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The idea that addiction is somehow a psychological illness is, I think, totally ridiculous. It's as psychological as malaria. It's a matter of exposure. People, generally speaking, will take any intoxicant or any drug that gives them a pleasant effect if it is available to them.
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No atomic physicist has to worry, people will always want to kill other people on a mass scale. Sure, he's got the fridge full of sausages and spring water.
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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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Some people like neat suburbs. I always am attracted to the rundown and the old and the offbeat.
William S. Burroughs
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He asked if i wouldn't like to live completely without problems, say in greece maybe, nice climate, everything provided? i say: when we find out what we are actually doing and who we actually are, that is the point of living...it may be only a few seconds...a few seconds of significant actions, out of a lifetime.
William S. Burroughs
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After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it.
William S. Burroughs
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[Jack] Kerouac was writing fiction. What he did when he wrote about me...he made me out with Russian Countesses and Swiss accounts and other things I didn't have or didn't happen and so on.
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Panic is the sudden realization that everything around you is alive.
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The first and most important thing an individual can do is to become an individual again, decontrol himself, train himself as to what is going on and win back as much independent ground for himself as possible
William S. Burroughs
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No one owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death.
William S. Burroughs
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Dennis Cooper, God help him, is a born writer.
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The more absolute the need, the more predictable the behavior becomes until it is mathematically certain.
William S. Burroughs
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We can translate word and letter into color - [Arthur] Rimbaud stated that in his color vowels, words quote words can be read in silent color.
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Many doctors are drawn to this profession (psychology) because they have an innate deficiency of insight into the motives, feelings and thoughts of others, a deficiency they hope to remedy by ingesting masses of data.
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 word is now a virus.
William S. Burroughs
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The idea that anyone can use drugs and escape a horrible fate is anathema to these idiots. I predict in the near future right-wingers will use drug hysteria as a pretext to set up an international police apparatus.
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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.
William S. Burroughs
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Addiction is a disease of exposure. Doctors and nurses, for instance, have a high addiction rate.
William S. Burroughs
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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