William S. Burroughs Quotes
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In deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality. It is as final as the mountains: a fact. There it is. When you realize it you cannot complain.
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A junky runs on junk time. When the junk is cut off, the clock runs down and stops. All he can do is hang on and wait for non-junky time to start. A sick junky has no escape from external time, no place to go. He can only wait.
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No atomic physicist has to worry, people will always want to kill other people on a mass scale. Sure, he's got the fridge full of sausages and spring water.
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Never interfere in a girl and boy fight.
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Like Spain, I am bound to the past.
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When you stop growing you start dying.
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when I become death. Death is the seed from which I grow.
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Most serious writers refuse to make themselves available to the things that technology is doing. I've never been able to understand this sort of fear.
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I escaped the [Southern-writer] label because I didn't and don't write about the South.
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Society is cancerous and bureaucracy is its cancer.
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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.
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Most people don't see what's going on around them. That's my principal message to writers: 'For God's sake, keep your eyes open. Notice what's going on around you.'
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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
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I read a lot of books for information, like doctor books, spy books. . . .
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Cheat your landlord if you can -- and must -- but do not try to shortchange the Muse.
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We should exterminate all rational thought.
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Modern man has lost the option of silence.
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How I hate those who are dedicated to producing conformity.
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Hemingway was a prisoner of his style. No one can talk like the characters in Hemingway except the characters in Hemingway. His style in the wildest sense finally killed him.
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Perhaps all pleasure is only relief.
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In my writing I am acting as a map maker, an explorer of psychic areas, a cosmonaut of inner space, and I see no point in exploring areas that have already been thoroughly surveyed.
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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.
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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.
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Most all methods of capitol punishment are designed to inflict the maximum of humiliation - not attempts to prevent suicide.