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Faced by the actual practice of freedom, the French and American revolutions would be forced to stand by their words.

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
Stand
Practice
American
Revolutions
Freedom
Faced
Words
Forced
Would
French
Actual
Revolution

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Our national drug is alcohol. We tend to regard the use of any other drug with special horror.
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There couldn't be a society of people who didn't dream. They'd be dead in two weeks.
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Whatever happened to God's justice? I am convinced that God exist and God is one asshole.
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Jesus Christ said 'by their fruits ye shall know them,' not by their disclaimers.
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Bizarre and engrossingly disturbing, Naked Lunch, finds truth in madness.
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I know this one pusher walks around humming a tune and everybody he passes takes it up. He is so grey and spectral and anonymous they don't see him and think it is their own mind humming the tune.
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No one is ever really alone. You are part of everything alive.
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My characters are quite as real to me as so-called real people which is one reason why I'm not subject to what is known as loneliness. I have plenty of company.
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Some of us are sixty feet long with a brain the size of a walnut.
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You must learn to exist with no religion, no country, no allies. You must learn to live alone in silence.
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After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say 'I want to see the manager.'
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Too perfect to be sexually attractive.
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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.
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Always remember, there's no point trying to be faithful to the book because film and writing are just two completely different things. Any film stands on its own, apart from whether it's based on a novel.
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I began to get a feeling familiar to me from my bartending days of being the only sane man in a nuthouse. It doesn't make you feel superior but depressed and scared, because there is nobody you can contact.
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Americans have a special horror of giving up control, of letting things happen in their own way without interference.
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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.
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Most people don't see what's going on around them. That's my principal message to writers: 'For God's sake, keep your eyes open. Notice what's going on around you.'
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How far would people get in physics if discovery was described as disgusting - Your formula is disgusting and filthy? Not very far.
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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.
William S. Burroughs