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A phenomenon must be to some extent comprehensible to be perceived at all.
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
Comprehensible
Perceived
Phenomenon
Extent
Must
More quotes by William S. Burroughs
I certainly wouldn't advocate anyone using drugs on a regular or habitual basis.
William S. Burroughs
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
For any species to change, if they are unable and are unwilling to do so - I might, for example, have suggested to the dinosaurs that heavy armor and great size was a sinking ship, and that they do well to convert to mammal facilities - it would not lie in my power or desire to reconvert a reluctant dinosaur.
William S. Burroughs
Changes... can only be effected by alterations in the original. The only thing not prerecorded in a prerecorded universe are the prerecordings themselves. The copies can only repeat themselves word for word. A virus is a copy. You can pretty it up, cut it up, scramble it - it will reassemble in the same form.
William S. Burroughs
When all lies, deceit, pretense is stripped away, what remains? The truth of a painting, or a book or a man.
William S. Burroughs
If everyone is to be made responsible for everything they do, you must extend responsibility beyond the level of conscious intention.
William S. Burroughs
Death was in every sell of his body. He gave off a faint, greenish steam of decay. Lee imagined he would glow in the dark.
William S. Burroughs
Hustlers of the world, there is one mark you cannot beat: the mark inside.
William S. Burroughs
All abilities are paid for with disabilities. perfect health may entail the heavy toll of bovine stupidity. insight into one area involves blind spots in another.
William S. Burroughs
Nothing is true, everything is permitted.
William S. Burroughs
Virtue is simply happiness, and happiness is a by-product of function. You are happy when you are functioning.
William S. Burroughs
In Mexico your wishes have a dream power. When you want to see someone, he turns up.
William S. Burroughs
If I knew how much you loved me, I would’ve shot you sooner.
William S. Burroughs
England has the most sordid literary scene I've ever seen. They all meet in the same pub. This guy's writing a foreword for this person. They all have to give radio programs, they have to do all this just in order to scrape by. They're all scratching each other's backs.
William S. Burroughs
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.
William S. Burroughs
Biologically speaking the Afro-Asiatic block is in the ascendancy - always remember that both Negro and White are minority groups - the largest race is the Mongoloid group.
William S. Burroughs
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
Humility is indeed beatness, a compulsory virtue that no one exhibits unless he has to.
William S. Burroughs
No one is ever really alone. You are part of everything alive.
William S. Burroughs
You do an awful lot of bad writing in order to do any good writing. Incredibly bad. I think it would be very interesting to make a collection of some of the worst writing by good writers.
William S. Burroughs