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How long does it take man to realize that he cannot want what he wants? You have to live in hell to see heaven.
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
Live
Take
Realize
Long
Wants
Men
Realizing
Hell
Heaven
Cannot
Doe
More quotes by William S. Burroughs
A paranoid is someone who has all the facts.
William S. Burroughs
The most deadly picture is a picture of nothing at all. The colors are there, but there is no image, nothing.
William S. Burroughs
[Arab peoples] are stuck back thousands of years and they think they're going to get out with a TV set.
William S. Burroughs
How I hate those who are dedicated to producing conformity.
William S. Burroughs
Many of my characters first came through to me as voices. That's why I use a tape recorder.
William S. Burroughs
Nothing is true, everything is permitted.
William S. Burroughs
Artists to my mind are the real architects of change.
William S. Burroughs
Kerouac and I are not real at all. The only thing about a writer is that he has written, and not his so-called life. 'And we (will) all die and the stars will go out, one after another.
William S. Burroughs
Panic is the sudden realization that everything around you is alive.
William S. Burroughs
Scientology is a model control system, a state in fact with its own courts, police, rewards and penalties.
William S. Burroughs
Every word is autobiographical, and every word is fiction.
William S. Burroughs
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
I think Judge Learned Hand was a cultured, intelligent man.
William S. Burroughs
Too perfect to be sexually attractive.
William S. Burroughs
By the flaws in the picture the truth will emerge.
William S. Burroughs
Visual art and writing don't exist on an aesthetic hierarchy that positions one above the other, because each is capable of things the other can't do at all. Sometimes one picture is equal to 30 pages of discourse, just as there are things images are completely incapable of communicating.
William S. Burroughs
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.
William S. Burroughs
A phenomenon must be to some extent comprehensible to be perceived at all.
William S. Burroughs
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
Junk takes everything and gives nothing but insurance against junk sickness.
William S. Burroughs
