Quote

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

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
Mind
Image
Function
Written
Words
Become
Find
Must
Repeated
Thing
Images

More quotes by William S. Burroughs

Image
Given certain known factors in an equation and the equation comprising a situation of absolute need - any form of need - you can predict the results. Leave a sick junkie in the back room of a drugstore and only one result is possible.
William S. Burroughs
Image
In deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality.
William S. Burroughs
Image
I think there are innumerable gods. What we on earth call God is a little tribal God who has made an awful mess. Certainly forces operating through human consciousness control events.
William S. Burroughs
Image
The world wasn't a more tolerant place when I was a young man. Rather, they simply sidestepped all the issues.
William S. Burroughs
Image
The face of evil is always the face of total need.
William S. Burroughs
Image
I'm an old-fashioned person, and I don't like informers.
William S. Burroughs
Image
In the U.S., you have to be a deviant or die of boredom.
William S. Burroughs
Image
The youth rebellion [1968] is a worldwide phenomenon that has not been seen before in history. I do not believe they will calm down ad be ad execs at thirty as the Establishment would like us to believe.
William S. Burroughs
Image
I escaped the [Southern-writer] label because I didn't and don't write about the South.
William S. Burroughs
Image
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
Image
Piss off Satan and don't take me for dumber than I look.
William S. Burroughs
Image
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
Image
You can't fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.
William S. Burroughs
Image
Happinessis a byproduct of function. Those who seek happiness for itself seek victory without war.
William S. Burroughs
Image
There isn't a feeling you can get on drugs that you can't get without drugs.
William S. Burroughs
Image
The essence of White Supremacy is this: they are people who want to keep things as they are. That their children's children's children might be a different color is something very alarming to them - in short they are committed to the maintenance of the static image.
William S. Burroughs
Image
The Planet drifts to random insect doom.
William S. Burroughs
Image
In Mexico your wishes have a dream power. When you want to see someone, he turns up.
William S. Burroughs
Image
There's a boy across the river with an ass like a peach alas I was no swimmer and lost my Clementine.
William S. Burroughs
Image
Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape.
William S. Burroughs