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I read Mailer's Ancient Evenings with great interest because I was interested in . . . the seven souls structure, which was very helpful to me in Western Lands. And also in Place of Dead Roads. So that's Mailer.

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
Great
Interested
Roads
Dead
Helpful
Land
Evening
Interest
Souls
Read
Ancient
Place
Western
Mailer
Also
Structure
Evenings
Soul
Seven
Lands

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I detest limitations of any kind, and intend to establish my ass some place where I am a virgin on the police blotter.
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Strip your psyche to the bare bones of spontaneous process, and you give yourself one chance in a thousand to make the Pass.
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The Planet drifts to random insect doom.
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Death needs time for what it kills to grow in.
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A cat's rage is beautiful, burning with pure cat flame, all its hair standing up and crackling blue sparks, eyes blazing and sputtering.
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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.
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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.
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Faced by the actual practice of freedom, the French and American revolutions would be forced to stand by their words.
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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.
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The word is now a virus.
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I know that Nature designs that this whole continent, not merely these thirty-six states, shall be, sooner or later, within the magic circle of the American union.
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All political organizations tend to function like a machine, to eliminate the unpredictable factor of affect - emotion.
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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.
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Time: a landing field! Death needs time like a junkie needs junk.
William S. Burroughs
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Political conflicts are merely surface manifestations. If conflicts arise you may be sure that certain powers intend to keep this conflict under operation since they hope to profit from the situation.
William S. Burroughs
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Speaking for myself, art differs from writing in that I never know what I'm going to paint until I paint it, so it's almost like automatic writing. A writer, on the other hand, can't help but know what he's going to write, because the activity demands a degree of premeditation.
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A writer does not own words any more than a painter owns colors. So lets dispense with this originality fetish… Look, listen and transcribe and forget about being original.
William S. Burroughs
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We must all face the fact that our leaders are certifiably insane or worse
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If I knew how much you loved me, I would’ve shot you sooner.
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O death where is thy sting? The man is never on time.
William S. Burroughs