Quote

America is not so much a nightmare as a non-dream. The American non-dream is precisely a move to wipe the dream out of existence. 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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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
America
Move
Wipe
Much
Dangerous
Dreamer
Control
Spontaneous
System
Nightmare
Existence
Precisely
American
Happenings
Moving
Happening
Dream
Therefore
Dreamers

More quotes by William S. Burroughs

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I think if a writer is not endeavoring to expand and alter consciousness in himself and in his readers, he is not doing much of anything. It is precisely words, word lines, lines of words and images, and associations connected with these word and image lines in the brain, that keep you in present time, right where you are sitting now.
William S. Burroughs
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When you get to be my age there are more and more people you have known that you miss. Brion [Gysin], Antony Balch, Ian Summerville are ones I think of right away I was quite close to.
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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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Like many nonconformist and beat generation writers, William S. Burroughs takes the outcasts of society as his theme.
William S. Burroughs
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So many people in the Western World are just automatically made ill by any sort of frank writing about sexual matters.
William S. Burroughs
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[Arab peoples] are stuck back thousands of years and they think they're going to get out with a TV set.
William S. Burroughs
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We must all face the fact that our leaders are certifiably insane or worse
William S. Burroughs
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Artists to my mind are the real architects of change.
William S. Burroughs
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Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer.
William S. Burroughs
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The most deadly picture is a picture of nothing at all. The colors are there, but there is no image, nothing.
William S. Burroughs
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They tend to be suspicious, bristly, paranoid-type people with huge egos they push around like some elephantiasis victim with his distended testicles in a wheelbarrow terrified no doubt that some skulking ingrate of a clone student will sneak into his very brain and steal his genius work.
William S. Burroughs
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The youth rebellion [1968] is a worldwide phenomenon that has not been seen before in history. I do not believe they will calm down ad be ad execs at thirty as the Establishment would like us to believe.
William S. Burroughs
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Most all methods of capitol punishment are designed to inflict the maximum of humiliation - not attempts to prevent suicide.
William S. Burroughs
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I don't care if people hate my guts I assume most of them do. The important question is whether they are in a position to do anything about it.
William S. Burroughs
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Man must get away from verbal forms to attain the consciousness, that which is there to be perceived at hand.
William S. Burroughs
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Nothing exists until or unless it is observed. An artist is making something exist by observing it. And his hope for other people is that they will also make it exist by observing it. I call it 'creative observation.' Creative viewing.
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.
William S. Burroughs
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How long does it take man to realize that he cannot want what he wants? You have to live in hell to see heaven.
William S. Burroughs
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Smash the control images. Smash the control machine.
William S. Burroughs
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Faced by the actual practice of freedom, the French and American revolutions would be forced to stand by their words.
William S. Burroughs