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Man must get away from verbal forms to attain the consciousness, that which is there to be perceived at hand.

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
Perceived
Must
Attain
Men
Forms
Consciousness
Hand
Away
Hands
Verbal
Form

More quotes by William S. Burroughs

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There's no place for impractical dreamers around here.
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Like Spain, I am bound to the past.
William S. Burroughs
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I've listened to and know Allen Ginsberg music and met him a couple of times, but I don't have any strong statements to make.
William S. Burroughs
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It's a tract against capital punishment in the genre of Swift's Modest Proposal. I was simply following a formula to its logical conclusion. Some people appear to have understood it. The publication of Naked Lunch in England practically coincided with their abolition of capital punishment. The book obviously had a certain effect.
William S. Burroughs
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Cut word lines — Cut music lines — Smash the control images — Smash the control machine — Burn the books — Kill the priests — Kill! Kill! Kill!
William S. Burroughs
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Be just and if you can't be just, be arbitrary.
William S. Burroughs
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There's a book called Mummy and the people actually seem to have become addicted to mummy dust. And mummy dust was somehow made from people who've died of the most loathsome diseases. It's too bad that [David] Cronenberg didn't see this book, see I only saw it after the film was made. It might have been of interest to him.
William S. Burroughs
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That old feeling is still in my leaking heart.
William S. Burroughs
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I knew [Timothy] Leary, but barely knew, didn't really know Jan [Kerouac].
William S. Burroughs
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The idea that addiction is somehow a psychological illness is, I think, totally ridiculous. It's as psychological as malaria. It's a matter of exposure. People, generally speaking, will take any intoxicant or any drug that gives them a pleasant effect if it is available to them.
William S. Burroughs
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A consumer society is about simplfying and degrading the consumer as well as the product.
William S. Burroughs
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I miss you so much your absence causes me, at times, accute pain. I don't mean sexually. I mean in connection with my writing.
William S. Burroughs
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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.
William S. Burroughs
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what a horrible loutish planet this is. the dominant species consists of sadistic morons, faces bearing the hideous lineaments of spiritual famine swollen with stupid hate. hopeless rubbish.
William S. Burroughs
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You know a real friend? Someone you know will look after your cat after you are gone.
William S. Burroughs
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The purpose of technology is not to confuse the brain but to serve the body.
William S. Burroughs
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I bear my burden proudly for all to see, to conquer prejudice and ignorance and hate with knowledge and sincerity and love. Whenever you are threatened by a hostile presence, you emit a thick cloud of love like an octopus squirts out ink.
William S. Burroughs
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in the magical universe there are no coincidences and there are no accidents. nothing happens unless someone wills it to happen
William S. Burroughs
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Madness is confusion of levels of fact. . . . Madness is not seeing visions but confusing levels.
William S. Burroughs
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Some people like neat suburbs. I always am attracted to the rundown and the old and the offbeat.
William S. Burroughs