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America is not a young land: it is old and dirty and evil before the settlers, before the Indians. The evil is there waiting.

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
Waiting
Evil
Young
America
Settlers
Indians
Dirty
Land

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I had not taken a bath in a year nor changed my clothes or removed them except to stick a needle every hour in the fibrous grey wooden flesh of heroin addiction. I did absolutely nothing.
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If a weaker baboon be attacked by a stronger baboon the weaker baboon will either (a) present his hrump fanny I believe is the word, gentlemen, heh heh for passive intercourse or (b) if he is a different type baboon more extrovert and well-adjusted, lead an attack on an even weaker baboon if he can find one.
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A doctor is not criticized for describing the manifestations and symptoms of an illness, even though the symptoms may be disgusting. I feel that a writer has the right to the same freedom In fact, I think that the time has come for the line between literature and science, a purely arbitrary line, to be erased.
William S. Burroughs
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I prefer cats to people, for the most part. Most people aren't cute at all, and if they are cute they very rapidly outgrow it.
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And there are my cats, engaged in a ritual that goes back thousands of years, tranquilly licking themselves after the meal. Practical animals, they prefer to have others provide the food ... some of them do. There must have been a split between the cats who accepted domestication and those who did not.
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Like many nonconformist and beat generation writers, William S. Burroughs takes the outcasts of society as his theme.
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Scientology is a model control system, a state in fact with its own courts, police, rewards and penalties.
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That old feeling is still in my leaking heart.
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Be just and if you can't be just, be arbitrary.
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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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If all individuals were conditioned to machine efficiency in the performance of their duties there would have to be at least one person outside the machine to give the necessary orders if the machine absorbed or eliminated all those outside the machine, the machine will slow down and stop forever.
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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
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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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The dark Gods of pain are surfacing from the immemorial filth of time.
William S. Burroughs
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If you weren't surprised by your life you wouldn't be alive. Life is surprise.
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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.
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The best way to keep something bad from happening is to see it ahead of time... and you can't see it if you refuse to face the possibility.
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Whether you sniff it smoke it eat it or shove it up your ass the result is the same: addiction.
William S. Burroughs
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The more absolute the need, the more predictable the behavior becomes until it is mathematically certain.
William S. Burroughs
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Dennis Cooper, God help him, is a born writer.
William S. Burroughs