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There is in fact something obscene and sinister about photography, a desire to imprison, to incorporate, a sexual intensity of pursuit.

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
Sexual
Pursuit
Photography
Fact
Imprison
Desire
Incorporate
Facts
Obscene
Something
Sinister
Intensity

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I read a lot of books for information, like doctor books, spy books. . . .
William S. Burroughs
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If you are asking me what the individual can do right now, in a political sense, I'd have to say he can't do all that much. Speaking for myself, I am more concerned with the transformation of the individual, which to me is much more important than the so-called political revolution.
William S. Burroughs
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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
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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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The photo collage is a way to travel that must be used with skill and precision if we are to arrive... The collage as a flexible hieroglyph language of juxtaposition: A collage makes a statement.
William S. Burroughs
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Piss off Satan and don't take me for dumber than I look.
William S. Burroughs
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A paranoid is someone who has all the facts.
William S. Burroughs
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Any unchecked impulse does, within the human body and psyche, lead to the destruction of the organism.
William S. Burroughs
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I knew [Timothy] Leary, but barely knew, didn't really know Jan [Kerouac].
William S. Burroughs
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I was thinking about New Mexico, and I rounded the corner in New York, and there was a New Mexico license plate: New Mexico, land of enchantment.
William S. Burroughs
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Home is where your ass is and if you want to move you move your ass the first step is learning to change homes with someone else and have someone else's ass.
William S. Burroughs
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Yes, for all of us in the Shakespeare Squadron, writing is just that: not an escape from reality, but an attempt to change reality.
William S. Burroughs
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For years I wondered why dreams are so often dull when related, and this morning I find the answer, which is very simple - like most answers, you have always known it: No context ... like a stuffed animal set on the floor of a bank.
William S. Burroughs
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Anslinger's reefer madness did not caution even the seeds of efficient, intelligent, ruthless action ... The same goes for Hoover, sniveling Nixon, the whole miserable, wretchedly evil lot of them ... not a man among them who could have pulled off a successful coup in a banana republic.
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.
William S. Burroughs
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In deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality. It is as final as the mountains: a fact. There it is. When you realize it you cannot complain.
William S. Burroughs
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Kerouac and I are not real at all. The only thing about a writer is that he has written, and not his so-called life. 'And we (will) all die and the stars will go out, one after another.
William S. Burroughs
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Naked Lunch was from about a thousand pages of material. A lot of it overflowed, then, into the cut-up trilogy including Nova Express.
William S. Burroughs
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If all pleasure is relief from tension, junk affords relief from the whole life process, in disconnecting the hypothalamus, which is the center of psychic energy and libido.
William S. Burroughs
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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.
William S. Burroughs