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He [Samuel Beckett] is great, a very great writer. Any modern writer is bound to be influenced by [James] Joyce. Of course, by Beckett as well.
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
Wells
Influenced
Well
James
Great
Bound
Bounds
Writer
Modern
Beckett
Courses
Samuel
Course
Joyce
More quotes by William S. Burroughs
In deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality.
William S. Burroughs
The simplest questions are the most difficult.
William S. Burroughs
It is to be remembered that the origin of all the arts-music, painting and writing-is magical and evocative and that magic is always used to obtain some definite result.
William S. Burroughs
I feel that any form of so called psychotherapy is strongly contraindicated for addicts. The question Why did you start using narcotics in the first place? should never be asked. It is quite as irrelevant to treatment as it would be to ask a malarial patient why he went to a malarial area.
William S. Burroughs
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
[Arab peoples] are stuck back thousands of years and they think they're going to get out with a TV set.
William S. Burroughs
Sexual arousal results from the repetition and impact of image.
William S. Burroughs
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
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
There are no innocent bystanders ... what are they doing there in the first place?
William S. Burroughs
Changes... can only be effected by alterations in the original. The only thing not prerecorded in a prerecorded universe are the prerecordings themselves. The copies can only repeat themselves word for word. A virus is a copy. You can pretty it up, cut it up, scramble it - it will reassemble in the same form.
William S. Burroughs
Fear of death is form of stasis horrors. The dead weight of time.
William S. Burroughs
For God's sake, keep your eyes open. Notice what's going on around you.
William S. Burroughs
The world wasn't a more tolerant place when I was a young man. Rather, they simply sidestepped all the issues.
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
There's a boy across the river with an ass like a peach alas I was no swimmer and lost my Clementine.
William S. Burroughs
I began to get a feeling familiar to me from my bartending days of being the only sane man in a nuthouse. It doesn't make you feel superior but depressed and scared, because there is nobody you can contact.
William S. Burroughs
Junk takes everything and gives nothing but insurance against junk sickness.
William S. Burroughs
Black magic operates most effectively in preconscious, marginal areas. Casual curses are the most effective.
William S. Burroughs
The people in power will not disappear voluntarily, giving flowers to the cops just isn't going to work. This thinking is fostered by the establishment they like nothing better than love and nonviolence. The only way I like to see cops given flowers is in a flower pot from a high window.
William S. Burroughs
