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A writer does not own words any more than a painter owns colors. So lets dispense with this originality fetish… Look, listen and transcribe and forget about being original.

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
Look
Originals
Transcribe
Looks
Original
Dispense
Listen
Fetish
Writer
Owns
Color
Lets
Forget
Originality
Words
Colors
Doe
Painter

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In my writing I am acting as a map maker, an explorer of psychic areas, a cosmonaut of inner space, and I see no point in exploring areas that have already been thoroughly surveyed.
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Thanks for the American dream, to vulgarize and falsify until the bare lies shine through. Thanks for a country where nobody's allowed to mind their own business.
William S. Burroughs
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Cat hate reflects an ugly, stupid, loutish, bigoted spirit. There can be no compromise with this Ugly Spirit.
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Gentle reader, the Fountain of Youth is radioactive, and those who imbibe its poisonous heavy waters will suffer the hideous fate of decaying metal. Yet almost without exception, the wretched idiot inhabitants of our benighted planet would gulp down this radioactive excrement if it were offered.
William S. Burroughs
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Time is what death needs to grow people in.
William S. Burroughs
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What does the money machine eat? It eats youth, spontaneity, life, beauty, and, above all, it eats creativity. It eats quality and sh*ts quantity.
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as soon as you know you are in prison, you have a possibility to escape.
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Junk is not, like alcohol or weed, a means to increased enjoyment of life. Junk is not a kick. It is a way of life.
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The word is now a virus.
William S. Burroughs
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Thanks, for a country where nobody is allowed to mind his own business. Thanks, for a nation of finks.
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Revolution in America begins in books and music, then waits for political operatives to 'implement changes after the fact.'
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I miss you so much your absence causes me, at times, accute pain. I don't mean sexually. I mean in connection with my writing.
William S. Burroughs
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I escaped the [Southern-writer] label because I didn't and don't write about the South.
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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Life is a vacation from two eternities.
William S. Burroughs
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In homosexual sex you know exactly what the other person is feeling, so you are identifying with the other person completely. In heterosexual sex you have no idea what the other person is feeling.
William S. Burroughs
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in the magical universe there are no coincidences and there are no accidents. nothing happens unless someone wills it to happen
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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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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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Many of my characters first came through to me as voices. That's why I use a tape recorder.
William S. Burroughs