Quote

A junky runs on junk time. When the junk is cut off, the clock runs down and stops. All he can do is hang on and wait for non-junky time to start. A sick junky has no escape from external time, no place to go. He can only wait.

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
Cutting
Stops
Waiting
External
Start
Runs
Running
Hang
Place
Clock
Time
Escape
Wait
Junky
Sick
Junk

More quotes by William S. Burroughs

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The way to kill a man or a nation is to cut off his dreams, the way the whites are taking care of the Indians: killing their dreams, their magic, their familiar spirits.
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For instance, they [The Federal Narcotics Bureau ] give out that marijuana is a harmful and habit-forming drug, and it simply isn't. They claim that you can get addicted to opiates with one shot, and you can't. They over-estimate the physical bad effects, and so forth.
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The essence of White Supremacy is this: they are people who want to keep things as they are. That their children's children's children might be a different color is something very alarming to them - in short they are committed to the maintenance of the static image.
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Perhaps all pleasure is only relief.
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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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There is in fact something obscene and sinister about photography, a desire to imprison, to incorporate, a sexual intensity of pursuit.
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Like most qualities, cuteness is delineated by what it isn't. Most people aren't cute at all, or if so they quickly outgrow their cuteness ... Elegance, grace, delicacy, beauty, and a lack of self-consciousness: a creature who knows he is cute soon isn't.
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We are setting out to create new worlds, new beings, new modes of consciousness.
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All political organizations tend to function like a machine, to eliminate the unpredictable factor of affect - emotion.
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All writing is in fact cut-ups. A collage of words read heard overheard. What else?
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There are no innocent bystanders ... what are they doing there in the first place?
William S. Burroughs
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When you stop growing you start dying.
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(1) Never give anything away for nothing. (2) Never give more than you have to give (always catch the buyer hungry and always make him wait). (3) Always take everything back if you possibly can.
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After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it. I sure as hell wouldn't want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military.
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He asked if i wouldn't like to live completely without problems, say in greece maybe, nice climate, everything provided? i say: when we find out what we are actually doing and who we actually are, that is the point of living...it may be only a few seconds...a few seconds of significant actions, out of a lifetime.
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The only possible ethic is to do what one wants to do.
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In deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality.
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The Nova Mob doesn't have motives, as we understand motives. Sex is profoundly distasteful to a being of my mineral origin, as a leader of the Nova Mob, Mr. Bradley-Mr. Martin, said on one occasion.
William S. Burroughs
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O death where is thy sting? The man is never on time.
William S. Burroughs
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The dark Gods of pain are surfacing from the immemorial filth of time.
William S. Burroughs