Quote

The line between inner and outer landscapes is breaking down. Earthquakes can result from seismic upheavals within the human mind. The whole random universe of the industrial age is breaking down into cryptic fragments.

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
Human
Inner
Earthquakes
Humans
Result
Apocalypse
Whole
Line
Fragments
Mind
Results
Random
Seismic
Lines
Outer
Upheavals
Within
Industrial
Cryptic
Age
Breaking
Upheaval
Universe
Landscape
Landscapes

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The study of thinking machines teaches us more about the brain than we can learn by introspective methods. Western man is externalizing himself in the form of gadgets.
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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.
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When you stop growing you start dying.
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as soon as you know you are in prison, you have a possibility to escape.
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I do spend a great deal of time alone. I'm not very gregarious. I don't like parties and miscellaneous gatherings with no particular purpose. I think parties are largely a mistake. The bigger they are the more mistaken they are.
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I know this one pusher walks around humming a tune and everybody he passes takes it up. He is so grey and spectral and anonymous they don't see him and think it is their own mind humming the tune.
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Madness is confusion of levels of fact. . . . Madness is not seeing visions but confusing levels.
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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.
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First there was a young guy sitting in front of television in a T-shirt drinking beer with his mother, then there was an older fatter person sitting in front of television in a T-shirt drinking beer with his mother.
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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.
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If the soft machine works, don't fix it. If it works, don't fix it.
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Cheat your landlord if you can -- and must -- but do not try to shortchange the Muse.
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Death needs time for what it kills to grow in.
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I read a lot of books for information, like doctor books, spy books. . . .
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The junk merchant doesn't sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to his product. He does not improve and simplify his merchandise. He degrades and simplifies the client.
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Open your mind and let the pictures out
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I knew [Timothy] Leary, but barely knew, didn't really know Jan [Kerouac].
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I don't care if people hate my guts I assume most of them do. The important question is whether they are in a position to do anything about it.
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There isn't a feeling you can get on drugs that you can't get without drugs.
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If you are asking me what the individual can do right now, in a political sense, I'd have to say he can't do all that much. Speaking for myself, I am more concerned with the transformation of the individual, which to me is much more important than the so-called political revolution.
William S. Burroughs