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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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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
Beats
Generation
Outcasts
Writers
Nonconformist
Generations
Burroughs
Takes
Outcast
Society
William
Many
Theme
Like
Beat
More quotes by William S. Burroughs
Americans have a special horror of giving up control, of letting things happen in their own way without interference.
William S. Burroughs
The idea that addiction is somehow a psychological illness is, I think, totally ridiculous. It's as psychological as malaria. It's a matter of exposure. People, generally speaking, will take any intoxicant or any drug that gives them a pleasant effect if it is available to them.
William S. Burroughs
I'm definitely antiscientist because I feel that science represents a conspiracy to impose as the real and only universe, the universe of scientists themselves - they're reality-addicts, they've got to have things so real so they can get their hands on it.
William S. Burroughs
We must all face the fact that our leaders are certifiably insane or worse
William S. Burroughs
So many people in the Western World are just automatically made ill by any sort of frank writing about sexual matters.
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
England has the most sordid literary scene I've ever seen. They all meet in the same pub. This guy's writing a foreword for this person. They all have to give radio programs, they have to do all this just in order to scrape by. They're all scratching each other's backs.
William S. Burroughs
I'm creating an imaginary — it's always imaginary — world in which I would like to live.
William S. Burroughs
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.
William S. Burroughs
The simplest questions are the most difficult.
William S. Burroughs
My greatest strength is to have a great capacity to confront myself no matter how unpleasant. My greatest weakness is that I don't. I know that's enigmatic, but that's sort of a general formula for anyone, actually.
William S. Burroughs
Be just and if you can't be just, be arbitrary.
William S. Burroughs
Most serious writers refuse to make themselves available to the things that technology is doing. I've never been able to understand this sort of fear.
William S. Burroughs
as soon as you know you are in prison, you have a possibility to escape.
William S. Burroughs
You know, they ask me if I were on a desert island and I knew nobody would ever see what I wrote, would I go on writing. My answer is most emphatically yes. I would go on writing for company. Because I'm creating an imaginary - it's always imaginary - world in which I would like to live.
William S. Burroughs
There are no innocent bystanders.
William S. Burroughs
I am getting so far out one day I won't come back at all.
William S. Burroughs
Any unchecked impulse does, within the human body and psyche, lead to the destruction of the organism.
William S. Burroughs
Thinking is not enough. Nothing is. There is no final enough of wisdom, experience — any f...ing thing.
William S. Burroughs
Madness is confusion of levels of fact. . . . Madness is not seeing visions but confusing levels.
William S. Burroughs
