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Thanks for the American dream, to vulgarize and falsify until the bare lies shine through. Thanks for a country where nobody's allowed to mind their own business.

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
Lying
Thankfulness
American
Bare
Business
Shine
Dream
Thanks
America
Allowed
Country
Shining
Mind
Lies
Nobody
Falsify

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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.
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An addict never stops growing. Stupider.
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It is indeed difficult to make a living as a writer, and my advice to anyone contemplating a literary career is to have some other trade.
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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.
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The forward step must be made in silence. We detach ourselves from word forms - this can be accomplished by substituting for words, letters, concepts, verbal concepts, other modes of expressions: for example, color.
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[Death is] a gimmick. It's the time-birth-death gimmick. Can't go on much longer, too many people are wising up.
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Like many nonconformist and beat generation writers, William S. Burroughs takes the outcasts of society as his theme.
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Never interfere in a girl and boy fight.
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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.
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We can translate word and letter into color - [Arthur] Rimbaud stated that in his color vowels, words quote words can be read in silent color.
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If I knew how much you loved me, I would’ve shot you sooner.
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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.
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Shooting is my principal pastime.
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Criminal law is one of the few professions where the client buys someone else's luck. The luck of most people is strictly non-transferrable. But a good criminal lawyer can sell all his luck to a client, and the more luck he sells the more he has to sell.
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Smash the control images. Smash the control machine.
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Addiction is a disease of exposure. Doctors and nurses, for instance, have a high addiction rate.
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Time: a landing field! Death needs time like a junkie needs junk.
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Tangier is one of the few places left in the world where, so long as you don't proceed to robbery, violence, or some form of crude, antisocial behavior, you can do exactly what you want.
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As an old junk pusher told me, 'Watch whose money you pick up.'
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Everything Jack says is to be taken with considerable reserve.
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