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Revolution in America begins in books and music, then waits for political operatives to 'implement changes after the fact.'

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
Book
Revolution
Books
Waiting
Fact
Operatives
Facts
Implement
Political
Waits
America
Begins
Music
Changes

More quotes by 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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Our national drug is alcohol. We tend to regard the use of any other drug with special horror.
William S. Burroughs
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Society is cancerous and bureaucracy is its cancer.
William S. Burroughs
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Cut word lines — Cut music lines — Smash the control images — Smash the control machine — Burn the books — Kill the priests — Kill! Kill! Kill!
William S. Burroughs
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I have no message to give the politicians of the world. They're all completely addicted to promiscuous verbalization and I'm quite sure they would not be at all interested in hearing about cut-ups and hieroglyphics and still less interested to hear about silence.
William S. Burroughs
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Well, disgusting doesn't refer to the books but to the subjective reaction of the person making the complaint. I don't think that anything is disgusting per se. These words disgusting and filthy, etc., have prevented us from undertaking any scientific experimentation in sexual matters.
William S. Burroughs
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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.
William S. Burroughs
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Every man has inside himself a parasitic being who is acting not at all to his advantage.
William S. Burroughs
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If you weren't surprised by your life you wouldn't be alive. Life is surprise.
William S. Burroughs
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We can translate word and letter into color - [Arthur] Rimbaud stated that in his color vowels, words quote words can be read in silent color.
William S. Burroughs
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Thinking is not enough. Nothing is. There is no final enough of wisdom, experience — any f...ing thing.
William S. Burroughs
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They tend to be suspicious, bristly, paranoid-type people with huge egos they push around like some elephantiasis victim with his distended testicles in a wheelbarrow terrified no doubt that some skulking ingrate of a clone student will sneak into his very brain and steal his genius work.
William S. Burroughs
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Now what sort of man or woman or monster would stroke a centipede I have ever seen? And here is my good big centipede! If such a man exists, I say kill him without more ado. He is a traitor to the human race.
William S. Burroughs
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The cat does not offer services. The cat offers itself. Of course he wants care and shelter. You don't buy love for nothing.
William S. Burroughs
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If I had my way we'd sleep every night all wrapped around each other like hibernating rattlesnakes.
William S. Burroughs
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Cat hate reflects an ugly, stupid, loutish, bigoted spirit. There can be no compromise with this Ugly Spirit.
William S. Burroughs
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The exact objectives of Islam Inc. are obscure. Needless to say everyone involved has a different angle, and they all intend to cross each other up somewhere along the line.
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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When you cut into the present the future leaks out.
William S. Burroughs
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To concern yourself with surface political conflicts is to make the mistake of the bull in the ring, you are charging the cloth. That is what politics is for, to teach you the cloth. Just as the bullfighter teaches the bull, teaches him to follow, obey the cloth.
William S. Burroughs