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Kerouac and I are not real at all. The only thing about a writer is that he has written, and not his so-called life. 'And we (will) all die and the stars will go out, one after another.

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
Life
Writer
Called
Written
Stars
Dies
Another
Real
Thing
Kerouac

More quotes by William S. Burroughs

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Kerouac opened a million coffee bars and sold a million pairs of Levis to both sexes. Woodstock rises from his pages.
William S. Burroughs
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Writing prejudicial, off-putting reviews is a precise exercise in applied black magic. The reviewer can draw free-floating disagreeable associations to a book by implying that the book is completely unimportant without saying exactly why, and carefully avoiding any clear images that could capture the reader's full attention.
William S. Burroughs
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Love is a haunting melody that I have never mastered, and I fear I never will.
William S. Burroughs
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Death needs time for what it kills to grow in.
William S. Burroughs
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In this world, [of Flash and Filigree] nothing is true, and censure or outrage is simply irrelevant.
William S. Burroughs
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Fear of death is form of stasis horrors. The dead weight of time.
William S. Burroughs
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I miss you so much your absence causes me, at times, accute pain. I don't mean sexually. I mean in connection with my writing.
William S. Burroughs
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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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If, after spending time with a person, you feel as though you've lost a quart of plasma, avoid that person in the future.
William S. Burroughs
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Knowing you might not make it... in that knowledge courage is born.
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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I think there are innumerable gods. What we on earth call God is a little tribal God who has made an awful mess. Certainly forces operating through human consciousness control events.
William S. Burroughs
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I read Mailer's Ancient Evenings with great interest because I was interested in . . . the seven souls structure, which was very helpful to me in Western Lands. And also in Place of Dead Roads. So that's Mailer.
William S. Burroughs
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Do not proffer sympathy to the mentally ill it is a bottomless pit. Tell them firmly, I am not paid to listen to this drivel - you are a terminal fool! Otherwise, they make you as crazy as they are.
William S. Burroughs
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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.'
William S. Burroughs
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Hustlers of the world, there is one mark you cannot beat: the mark inside.
William S. Burroughs
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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
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If after having been exposed to someone's presence you feel as if you've lost a quart of plasma, avoid that presence. You need it like you need pernicious anemia.
William S. Burroughs
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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
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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