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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.

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
Think
Deals
Miscellaneous
Thinking
Particular
Gathering
Like
Mistake
Largely
Alone
Mistaken
Party
Parties
Purpose
Bigger
Great
Spend
Gatherings
Time
Deal
Gregarious

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If all individuals were conditioned to machine efficiency in the performance of their duties there would have to be at least one person outside the machine to give the necessary orders if the machine absorbed or eliminated all those outside the machine, the machine will slow down and stop forever.
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The purpose of technology is not to confuse the brain but to serve the body.
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Society is cancerous and bureaucracy is its cancer.
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Love? What is it? Most natural painkiller what there is.
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Is Control controlled by its need to control? Answer: yes.
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Dream long enough and dream hard enough you will come to know dreaming can make it so.
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Do not proffer sympathy to the mentally ill it is a bottomless pit. Tell them firmly, I am not paid to listen to this drivel - you are a terminal fool! Otherwise, they make you as crazy as they are.
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You do an awful lot of bad writing in order to do any good writing. Incredibly bad. I think it would be very interesting to make a collection of some of the worst writing by good writers.
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People have nothing to say, but they are afraid of saying nothing, so what they do say comes out flat and vapid and meaningless. The shadow of death is on every face.
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I feel that opiates - I include opium and all its derivatives, such as morphine, heroin, pantopon, etc. - are quite useless for any sort of creative work, useful though they may be for routine work. Much of the hard physical work in the Far East is done by opium addicts.
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In the U.S., you have to be a deviant or die of boredom.
William S. Burroughs
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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.
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You need a good bedside manner with doctors or you will get nowhere.
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If you consider any set of data without a preconceived viewpoint, then a viewpoint will emerge from the data.
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Which came first the intestine or the tapeworm?
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[Arab peoples] are stuck back thousands of years and they think they're going to get out with a TV set.
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Black magic operates most effectively in preconscious, marginal areas. Casual curses are the most effective.
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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.
William S. Burroughs