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Bizarre and engrossingly disturbing, Naked Lunch, finds truth in madness.

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
Bizarre
Lunch
Finds
Madness
Naked
Truth
Disturbing

More quotes by William S. Burroughs

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Everything Jack says is to be taken with considerable reserve.
William S. Burroughs
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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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When you stop growing you start dying.
William S. Burroughs
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I feel that the change, the mutation in consciousness, will occur spontaneously once certain pressures now in operation are removed. I feel that the principal instrument of monopoly and control that prevents expansion of consciousness is the word lines controlling thought, feeling and apparent sensory impressions of the human host.
William S. Burroughs
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Well, disgusting doesn't refer to the books but to the subjective reaction of the person making the complaint. I don't think that anything is disgusting per se. These words disgusting and filthy, etc., have prevented us from undertaking any scientific experimentation in sexual matters.
William S. Burroughs
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Addiction is a disease of exposure. Doctors and nurses, for instance, have a high addiction rate.
William S. Burroughs
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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
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I've listened to and know Allen Ginsberg music and met him a couple of times, but I don't have any strong statements to make.
William S. Burroughs
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Revolution in America begins in books and music, then waits for political operatives to 'implement changes after the fact.'
William S. Burroughs
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There is only one thing a writer can write about: what is in front of his senses at the moment of writing... I am a recording instrument... I do not presume to impose story plot continuity... Insofar as I succeed in Direct recording of certain areas of psychic process I may have limited function... I am not an entertainer.
William S. Burroughs
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[Arab peoples] are stuck back thousands of years and they think they're going to get out with a TV set.
William S. Burroughs
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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.
William S. Burroughs
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As an old junk pusher told me, 'Watch whose money you pick up.'
William S. Burroughs
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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.
William S. Burroughs
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Changes... can only be effected by alterations in the original. The only thing not prerecorded in a prerecorded universe are the prerecordings themselves. The copies can only repeat themselves word for word. A virus is a copy. You can pretty it up, cut it up, scramble it - it will reassemble in the same form.
William S. Burroughs
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Happinessis a byproduct of function. Those who seek happiness for itself seek victory without war.
William S. Burroughs
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Home is where your ass is and if you want to move you move your ass the first step is learning to change homes with someone else and have someone else's ass.
William S. Burroughs
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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.
William S. Burroughs
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The junk merchant doesn't sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to his product. He does not improve and simplify his merchandise. He degrades and simplifies the client.
William S. Burroughs
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Death was in every sell of his body. He gave off a faint, greenish steam of decay. Lee imagined he would glow in the dark.
William S. Burroughs