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The forward step must be made in silence. We detach ourselves from word forms - this can be accomplished by substituting for words, letters, concepts, verbal concepts, other modes of expressions: for example, color.

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
Example
Letters
Word
Concepts
Substituting
Words
Forward
Detach
Form
Step
Modes
Must
Expression
Verbal
Made
Color
Expressions
Steps
Accomplished
Silence
Forms

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If a weaker baboon be attacked by a stronger baboon the weaker baboon will either (a) present his hrump fanny I believe is the word, gentlemen, heh heh for passive intercourse or (b) if he is a different type baboon more extrovert and well-adjusted, lead an attack on an even weaker baboon if he can find one.
William S. Burroughs
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Yes, for all of us in the Shakespeare Squadron, writing is just that: not an escape from reality, but an attempt to change reality.
William S. Burroughs
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America is not so much a nightmare as a non-dream. The American non-dream is precisely a move to wipe the dream out of existence. The dream is a spontaneous happening and therefore dangerous to a control system set up by the non-dreamers.
William S. Burroughs
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Intelligence and war are games, perhaps the only meaningful games left. If any player becomes too proficient, the game is threatened with termination.
William S. Burroughs
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Every word is autobiographical, and every word is fiction.
William S. Burroughs
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I am trying like Klee, to create something that will have a life of its own, that can put me in real danger, a danger which I willingly take on myself.
William S. Burroughs
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The best way to keep something bad from happening is to see it ahead of time... and you can't see it if you refuse to face the possibility.
William S. Burroughs
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Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact.
William S. Burroughs
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Last night I woke up with someone squeezing my hand. It was my other hand.
William S. Burroughs
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Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative.
William S. Burroughs
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Tangier is one of the few places left in the world where, so long as you don't proceed to robbery, violence, or some form of crude, antisocial behavior, you can do exactly what you want.
William S. Burroughs
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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
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If you are asking me what the individual can do right now, in a political sense, I'd have to say he can't do all that much. Speaking for myself, I am more concerned with the transformation of the individual, which to me is much more important than the so-called political revolution.
William S. Burroughs
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Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing.
William S. Burroughs
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Life is a vacation from two eternities.
William S. Burroughs
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Like all pure creatures, cats are practical.
William S. Burroughs
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I had the feeling that some horrible image was just beyond the field of vision, moving, as I turned my head, so that I never quite saw it.
William S. Burroughs
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How far would people get in physics if discovery was described as disgusting - Your formula is disgusting and filthy? Not very far.
William S. Burroughs
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The only way I like to see cops given flowers is in a flower pot from a high window.
William S. Burroughs
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No one is ever really alone. You are part of everything alive.
William S. Burroughs