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We must find out what words are and how they function. They become images when written down, but images of words repeated in the mind and not of the image of the thing itself.

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
Find
Must
Repeated
Thing
Images
Mind
Image
Function
Written
Words
Become

More quotes by William S. Burroughs

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I prefer cats to people, for the most part. Most people aren't cute at all, and if they are cute they very rapidly outgrow it.
William S. Burroughs
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I see no reason why the artistic world can't absolutely merge with Madison Avenue. Pop art is a move in that direction. Why can't we have advertisements with beautiful words and beautiful images?
William S. Burroughs
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Modern man has lost the option of silence.
William S. Burroughs
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There is nothing more provocative than minding your own business.
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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what a horrible loutish planet this is. the dominant species consists of sadistic morons, faces bearing the hideous lineaments of spiritual famine swollen with stupid hate. hopeless rubbish.
William S. Burroughs
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A junky runs on junk time. When the junk is cut off, the clock runs down and stops. All he can do is hang on and wait for non-junky time to start. A sick junky has no escape from external time, no place to go. He can only wait.
William S. Burroughs
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Artists to my mind are the real architects of change.
William S. Burroughs
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Life is a vacation from two eternities, who wants to waste those precious years worrying about what happens when you get back to forever?
William S. Burroughs
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There's no place for impractical dreamers around here.
William S. Burroughs
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My greatest strength is to have a great capacity to confront myself no matter how unpleasant. My greatest weakness is that I don't. I know that's enigmatic, but that's sort of a general formula for anyone, actually.
William S. Burroughs
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The Federal Narcotics Bureau does a grave disservice by disseminating a lot of misinformation. Most of what they say is such nonsense that I didn't believe them about addiction.
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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Scientology is a model control system, a state in fact with its own courts, police, rewards and penalties.
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'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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What are Americans? We've got everything from sharecroppers to atomic physicist here, and there's certainly no uniformity in their thought processes. There's very little they have in common. In fact, Americans should we say, have less in common than any other nationality.
William S. Burroughs
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Time is what death needs to grow people in.
William S. Burroughs
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Panic is the sudden realization that everything around you is alive.
William S. Burroughs
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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.
William S. Burroughs