Quote

The most deadly picture is a picture of nothing at all. The colors are there, but there is no image, nothing.

William S. Burroughs

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Nothing
Deadly
Colors
Image
Picture
Color

More quotes by William S. Burroughs

Image
How long does it take man to realize that he cannot want what he wants? You have to live in hell to see heaven.
William S. Burroughs
Image
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
Image
If you build a good name, eventually, that name will be its own currency.
William S. Burroughs
Image
I like the idea of generalizing the narcotic thing by making it black meat addiction.
William S. Burroughs
Image
If all pleasure is relief from tension, junk affords relief from the whole life process, in disconnecting the hypothalamus, which is the center of psychic energy and libido.
William S. Burroughs
Image
Changes... can only be effected by alterations in the original. The only thing not prerecorded in a prerecorded universe are the prerecordings themselves. The copies can only repeat themselves word for word. A virus is a copy. You can pretty it up, cut it up, scramble it - it will reassemble in the same form.
William S. Burroughs
Image
(1) Never give anything away for nothing. (2) Never give more than you have to give (always catch the buyer hungry and always make him wait). (3) Always take everything back if you possibly can.
William S. Burroughs
Image
America is not so much a nightmare as a non-dream. The American non-dream is precisely a move to wipe the dream out of existence. The dream is a spontaneous happening and therefore dangerous to a control system set up by the non-dreamers.
William S. Burroughs
Image
Kick is seeing things from a special angle. Kick is momentary freedom from the claims of the aging, cautious, nagging, fightened flesh.
William S. Burroughs
Image
Admittedly, a homosexual can be conditioned to react sexually to a woman, or to an old boot for that matter. In fact, both homo - and heterosexual experimental subjects have been conditioned to react sexually to an old boot, and you can save a lot of money that way.
William S. Burroughs
Image
Happinessis a byproduct of function. Those who seek happiness for itself seek victory without war.
William S. Burroughs
Image
Truth is used to vitalize a statement rather than devitalize it. Truth implies more than a simple statement of fact. I don't have any whiskey, may be a fact but it is not a truth.
William S. Burroughs
Image
Biologically speaking the Afro-Asiatic block is in the ascendancy - always remember that both Negro and White are minority groups - the largest race is the Mongoloid group.
William S. Burroughs
Image
Human, Allen, is an adjective, and its use as a noun is in itself regrettable.
William S. Burroughs
Image
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.
William S. Burroughs
Image
He [Samuel Beckett] is great, a very great writer. Any modern writer is bound to be influenced by [James] Joyce. Of course, by Beckett as well.
William S. Burroughs
Image
It's the little touches that make a future solid enough to destroy.
William S. Burroughs
Image
Life is a vacation from two eternities.
William S. Burroughs
Image
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.
William S. Burroughs
Image
In Mexico your wishes have a dream power. When you want to see someone, he turns up.
William S. Burroughs