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Once the law starts asking questions, there's no stopping them.
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
Questions
Asking
Liberty
Law
Government
Stopping
Starts
More quotes by William S. Burroughs
You were given the power to love in order to use it, no matter what pain it may cause you.
William S. Burroughs
I read a lot of books for information, like doctor books, spy books. . . .
William S. Burroughs
The program of the ruling elite in Orwell's 1984 was: A foot stamping on a human face forever! This is naive and optimistic. No species could survive for even a generation under such program. This is not a program of eternal, or even long-range dominance. It is clearly an extermination program.
William S. Burroughs
[Arab peoples] are stuck back thousands of years and they think they're going to get out with a TV set.
William S. Burroughs
I'm creating an imaginary — it's always imaginary — world in which I would like to live.
William S. Burroughs
The idea that anyone can use drugs and escape a horrible fate is anathema to these idiots. I predict in the near future right-wingers will use drug hysteria as a pretext to set up an international police apparatus.
William S. Burroughs
Artists to my mind are the real architects of change.
William S. Burroughs
I don't have any politics. I feel that as soon as politics arises, things are already in a hopeless state of deterioration.
William S. Burroughs
I am trying like Klee, to create something that will have a life of its own, that can put me in real danger, a danger which I willingly take on myself.
William S. Burroughs
No one owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death.
William S. Burroughs
What are Americans? We've got everything from sharecroppers to atomic physicist here, and there's certainly no uniformity in their thought processes. There's very little they have in common. In fact, Americans should we say, have less in common than any other nationality.
William S. Burroughs
I certainly wouldn't advocate anyone using drugs on a regular or habitual basis.
William S. Burroughs
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
We must all face the fact that our leaders are certifiably insane or worse
William S. Burroughs
For years I wondered why dreams are so often dull when related, and this morning I find the answer, which is very simple - like most answers, you have always known it: No context ... like a stuffed animal set on the floor of a bank.
William S. Burroughs
I feel that any form of so called psychotherapy is strongly contraindicated for addicts. The question Why did you start using narcotics in the first place? should never be asked. It is quite as irrelevant to treatment as it would be to ask a malarial patient why he went to a malarial area.
William S. Burroughs
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.
William S. Burroughs
Wouldn't it be great,as Scott Peck suggests, if all medical students had to undergo the symptoms and feeling of a spectrum of illnesses. From acute infections to terminal cancer - and Kuru, the laughing sickness. Just a month for each exposure, controlled of course, and a good heavy dose of excruciating pain. So they'll know what that feels like.
William S. Burroughs
First there was a young guy sitting in front of television in a T-shirt drinking beer with his mother, then there was an older fatter person sitting in front of television in a T-shirt drinking beer with his mother.
William S. Burroughs
[Death is] a gimmick. It's the time-birth-death gimmick. Can't go on much longer, too many people are wising up.
William S. Burroughs