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

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
Deadly
Colors
Image
Picture
Color
Nothing

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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.
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He is a boy sleeping against the mosque wall, ejaculates wet dreaming into a thousand cunts pink and smooth as sea shells.
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A writer does not own words any more than a painter owns colors. So lets dispense with this originality fetish… Look, listen and transcribe and forget about being original.
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.
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Jesus Christ said 'by their fruits ye shall know them,' not by their disclaimers.
William S. Burroughs
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Most of the trouble in this world has been caused by folks who can't mind their own business, because they have no business of their own to mind, any more than a smallpox virus has.
William S. Burroughs
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I'm against Capitol Punishment in all forms, and I have written many pamphlets on this subject in the manner of Swift's Modest Proposal pamphlet incorporated into Naked Lunch these pamphlets have marked Naked Lunch as an obscene book.
William S. Burroughs
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You were given the power to love in order to use it, no matter what pain it may cause you.
William S. Burroughs
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Rock and Roll adolescent hoodlums storm the streets of all nations. They rush into the Louvre and throw acid in the Mona Lisa's face.
William S. Burroughs
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I think Judge Learned Hand was a cultured, intelligent man.
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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I think all writers write for an audience. There is no such thing as writing for yourself.
William S. Burroughs
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I wasn't exposed to art as I was growing up, and can't recall the first time I saw a work of art. However, I remember very clearly a vision I had of a little green reindeer when I was a child, and visions emanate from the same mythical area where painting resides. Whatever the reason, I immediately felt comfortable working with visual materials.
William S. Burroughs
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Madness is confusion of levels of fact. . . . Madness is not seeing visions but confusing levels.
William S. Burroughs
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I think anybody incapable of changing his mind is crazy.
William S. Burroughs
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I've listened to and know Allen Ginsberg music and met him a couple of times, but I don't have any strong statements to make.
William S. Burroughs
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What does the money machine eat? It eats youth, spontaneity, life, beauty, and, above all, it eats creativity. It eats quality and sh*ts quantity.
William S. Burroughs
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I see painting as an evocative magic, and there must always be a random factor in magic, one which must be constantly changed and renewed.
William S. Burroughs
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After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say 'I want to see the manager.'
William S. Burroughs
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You know, they ask me if I were on a desert island and I knew nobody would ever see what I wrote, would I go on writing. My answer is most emphatically yes. I would go on writing for company. Because I'm creating an imaginary - it's always imaginary - world in which I would like to live.
William S. Burroughs