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When all lies, deceit, pretense is stripped away, what remains? The truth of a painting, or a book or a man.

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
Lying
Away
Truth
Stripped
Book
Pretense
Men
Deceit
Remains
Lies
Painting

More quotes by William S. Burroughs

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There is no line between the 'real world' and 'world of myth and symbol.' Objects, sensations, hit with the impact of hallucination.
William S. Burroughs
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Americans have a special horror of giving up control, of letting things happen in their own way without interference.
William S. Burroughs
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Take a shot in front of D.L. Probing for a vein in my dirty bare foot... Junkies have no shame... They are impervious to the repugnance of others. It is doubtful if shame can exist in the absence of sexual libido... The junky's shame disappears with his nonsexual sociability which is also dependent on libido.
William S. Burroughs
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Society is cancerous and bureaucracy is its cancer.
William S. Burroughs
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All writing is in fact cut-ups. A collage of words read heard overheard. What else?
William S. Burroughs
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Now all politicians assume a necessity of control, the more efficient the control the better.
William S. Burroughs
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Any belief in Creators or Purpose is wishful thinking. And when you point out that perhaps ALL thinking is wishful, reactions of intense irritation give evidence that we are not dealing with logic but with faith.
William S. Burroughs
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All political movements are basically anti-creative - since a political movement is a form of war.
William S. Burroughs
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The country with a low birth rate and low death rate will be hardest hit - and so the poor may indeed inherit the earth, because they're healthier.
William S. Burroughs
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Writing prejudicial, off-putting reviews is a precise exercise in applied black magic. The reviewer can draw free-floating disagreeable associations to a book by implying that the book is completely unimportant without saying exactly why, and carefully avoiding any clear images that could capture the reader's full attention.
William S. Burroughs
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No atomic physicist has to worry, people will always want to kill other people on a mass scale. Sure, he's got the fridge full of sausages and spring water.
William S. Burroughs
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Gentle reader, the Fountain of Youth is radioactive, and those who imbibe its poisonous heavy waters will suffer the hideous fate of decaying metal. Yet almost without exception, the wretched idiot inhabitants of our benighted planet would gulp down this radioactive excrement if it were offered.
William S. Burroughs
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Anslinger's reefer madness did not caution even the seeds of efficient, intelligent, ruthless action ... The same goes for Hoover, sniveling Nixon, the whole miserable, wretchedly evil lot of them ... not a man among them who could have pulled off a successful coup in a banana republic.
William S. Burroughs
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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
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We must all face the fact that our leaders are certifiably insane or worse
William S. Burroughs
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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.
William S. Burroughs
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Human, Allen, is an adjective, and its use as a noun is in itself regrettable.
William S. Burroughs
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Wouldn't it be great,as Scott Peck suggests, if all medical students had to undergo the symptoms and feeling of a spectrum of illnesses. From acute infections to terminal cancer - and Kuru, the laughing sickness. Just a month for each exposure, controlled of course, and a good heavy dose of excruciating pain. So they'll know what that feels like.
William S. Burroughs
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Death needs time for what it kills to grow in.
William S. Burroughs
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Now Christianity sounded good at first to the naive convert. Love, peace and charity - what's wrong with that? I'll tell you what's wrong - a series of unprecedented horrors perpetrated by so-called Christians: The Inquisition, the Conquistadores, the American Indian wars, slavery, Hiroshima and the present-day Bible Belt.
William S. Burroughs