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Modern man has lost the option of silence.

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
Option
Silence
Modern
Lost
Men

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I think Judge Learned Hand was a cultured, intelligent man.
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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.
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Some people like neat suburbs. I always am attracted to the rundown and the old and the offbeat.
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I wouldn't be in your position - old saw. If there is any political move that I would advocate it would be an alliance between America and Red China, if they'd have us.
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Man is an artifact designed for space travel. He is not designed to remain in his present biologic state any more than a tadpole is designed to remain a tadpole.
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Knowing you might not make it... in that knowledge courage is born.
William S. Burroughs
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There's a boy across the river with an ass like a peach alas I was no swimmer and lost my Clementine.
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For seven days she lay in bed looking sullenly at the ceiling as though resenting the death she had cultivated for so many years. Like some people who cannot vomit despite horrible nausea, she lay there unable to die, resisting death as she had resisted life, frozen with resentment of process and change.
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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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The only possible ethic is to do what one wants to do.
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In deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality. It is as final as the mountains: a fact. There it is. When you realize it you cannot complain.
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The Orgasmic Death Gimmick is rather complicated. It could be called the whole birth-death cycle of action, persuading people that birth and death are realities.
William S. Burroughs
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You can't fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.
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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.
William S. Burroughs
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Naked Lunch was from about a thousand pages of material. A lot of it overflowed, then, into the cut-up trilogy including Nova Express.
William S. Burroughs
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There's no place for impractical dreamers around here.
William S. Burroughs
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When you get to be my age there are more and more people you have known that you miss. Brion [Gysin], Antony Balch, Ian Summerville are ones I think of right away I was quite close to.
William S. Burroughs
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Now Christianity sounded good at first to the naive convert. Love, peace and charity - what's wrong with that? I'll tell you what's wrong - a series of unprecedented horrors perpetrated by so-called Christians: The Inquisition, the Conquistadores, the American Indian wars, slavery, Hiroshima and the present-day Bible Belt.
William S. Burroughs
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Belief is a meaningless word. What does it mean? I believe something. Okay, now you have someone who is hearing voices and believes in these voices. It doesn't mean they have any necessary reality. Your whole concept of your I is an illusion. You have to give something called an I before you speak of what the I believes.
William S. Burroughs
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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.
William S. Burroughs