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There are no innocent bystanders.
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
Bystanders
Innocent
More quotes by William S. Burroughs
I think all writers write for an audience. There is no such thing as writing for yourself.
William S. Burroughs
The cat does not offer services. The cat offers itself. Of course he wants care and shelter. You don't buy love for nothing.
William S. Burroughs
This is a war universe. War all the time. There may be other universes, but ours seems to be based on war and games.
William S. Burroughs
Smash the control images. Smash the control machine.
William S. Burroughs
There is no intensity of love or feeling that does not involve the risk of crippling hurt. It is a duty to take this risk, to love and feel without defense or reserve.
William S. Burroughs
Who was I? The stranger was footsteps in the snow a long time ago.
William S. Burroughs
Intelligence and war are games, perhaps the only meaningful games left. If any player becomes too proficient, the game is threatened with termination.
William S. Burroughs
Whether you like it or not, you are committed to the human endeavor. I cannot ally myself with such a purely negative goal as avoidance of suffering. Suffering is a chance you take by the fact of being alive.
William S. Burroughs
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
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.
William S. Burroughs
When people start talking about their bowel movements, they are inexorable as the processes of which they speak.
William S. Burroughs
It is to be remembered that the origin of all the arts-music, painting and writing-is magical and evocative and that magic is always used to obtain some definite result.
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
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.
William S. Burroughs
The most deadly picture is a picture of nothing at all. The colors are there, but there is no image, nothing.
William S. Burroughs
Love is a haunting melody that I have never mastered, and I fear I never will.
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
The dark Gods of pain are surfacing from the immemorial filth of time.
William S. Burroughs
Most all methods of capitol punishment are designed to inflict the maximum of humiliation - not attempts to prevent suicide.
William S. Burroughs
