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The study of thinking machines teaches us more about the brain than we can learn by introspective methods. Western man is externalizing himself in the form of gadgets.

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
Teach
Introspective
Brain
Gadgets
Learn
Methods
Form
Teaches
Men
Machines
Thinking
Method
Western
Study

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Who was I? The stranger was footsteps in the snow a long time ago.
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I certainly wouldn't advocate anyone using drugs on a regular or habitual basis.
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Any belief in Creators or Purpose is wishful thinking. And when you point out that perhaps ALL thinking is wishful, reactions of intense irritation give evidence that we are not dealing with logic but with faith.
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Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative.
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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
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It is indeed difficult to make a living as a writer, and my advice to anyone contemplating a literary career is to have some other trade.
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Be just and if you can't be just, be arbitrary.
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The Federal Narcotics Bureau does a grave disservice by disseminating a lot of misinformation. Most of what they say is such nonsense that I didn't believe them about addiction.
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I think there are innumerable gods. What we on earth call God is a little tribal God who has made an awful mess. Certainly forces operating through human consciousness control events.
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Whether you like it or not, you are committed to the human endeavor. I cannot ally myself with such a purely negative goal as avoidance of suffering. Suffering is a chance you take by the fact of being alive.
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Build a good name. Keep your name clean. Don't make compromises. Don't worry about making a bunch of money or being successful. Be concerned with doing good work and make the right choices and protect your work. And if you can build a good name, eventually, that name will be its own currency.
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Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape.
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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.
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By the flaws in the picture the truth will emerge.
William S. Burroughs
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Whatever happened to God's justice? I am convinced that God exist and God is one asshole.
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The whole point is, I feel the machine should be eliminated. Now that it has served its purpose of alerting us to the dangers of machine control.
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You were given the power to love in order to use it, no matter what pain it may cause you.
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I bear my burden proudly for all to see, to conquer prejudice and ignorance and hate with knowledge and sincerity and love. Whenever you are threatened by a hostile presence, you emit a thick cloud of love like an octopus squirts out ink.
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Cheat your landlord if you can -- and must -- but do not try to shortchange the Muse.
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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