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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
Men
Deceit
Remains
Lies
Painting
Lying
Away
Truth
Stripped
Book
Pretense
More quotes by William S. Burroughs
Look at these poisonous color maps where flesh trees grow from human sacrifices listen to these sniggering half-heard words of tenderness and doom from lips spotted with decay
William S. Burroughs
Cat hate reflects an ugly, stupid, loutish, bigoted spirit. There can be no compromise with this Ugly Spirit.
William S. Burroughs
A doctor is not criticized for describing the manifestations and symptoms of an illness, even though the symptoms may be disgusting. I feel that a writer has the right to the same freedom In fact, I think that the time has come for the line between literature and science, a purely arbitrary line, to be erased.
William S. Burroughs
I certainly wouldn't advocate anyone using drugs on a regular or habitual basis.
William S. Burroughs
For instance, they [The Federal Narcotics Bureau ] give out that marijuana is a harmful and habit-forming drug, and it simply isn't. They claim that you can get addicted to opiates with one shot, and you can't. They over-estimate the physical bad effects, and so forth.
William S. Burroughs
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
England has the most sordid literary scene I've ever seen. They all meet in the same pub. This guy's writing a foreword for this person. They all have to give radio programs, they have to do all this just in order to scrape by. They're all scratching each other's backs.
William S. Burroughs
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.
William S. Burroughs
Every man has inside himself a parasitic being who is acting not at all to his advantage.
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
The American uppermiddle-class citizen is a composite of negatives. He is largely delineated by what he is not.
William S. Burroughs
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
[Political movements] both favor alcohol and are against pot.
William S. Burroughs
He is a boy sleeping against the mosque wall, ejaculates wet dreaming into a thousand cunts pink and smooth as sea shells.
William S. Burroughs
I wouldn't be in your position - old saw. If there is any political move that I would advocate it would be an alliance between America and Red China, if they'd have us.
William S. Burroughs
Dennis Cooper, God help him, is a born writer.
William S. Burroughs
[Death is] a gimmick. It's the time-birth-death gimmick. Can't go on much longer, too many people are wising up.
William S. Burroughs
If you talk you always end up with politics, it gets nowhere. I mean man it's strictly from the soft typewriter.
William S. Burroughs
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
Hustlers of the world, there is one mark you cannot beat: the mark inside.
William S. Burroughs
