William S. Burroughs

William S. Burroughs

"You know, they ask me if I were on a desert island and I knew nobody would ever see what I wrote, would I go on writing. My answer is most emphatically yes. I would go on writing for company. Because I'm creating an imaginary — it's always imaginary — world in which I would like to live.(Interview, The Paris Review)"
69 Quotes
"You know, they ask me if I were on a desert island and I knew nobody would ever see what I wrote, would I go on writing. My answer is most emphatically yes. I would go on writing for company. Because I'm creating an imaginary — it's always imaginary — world in which I would like to live.(Interview, The Paris Review)"
William S. Burroughs
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"To be an outlaw you must first have a base in law to reject and get out of, I never had such a base. I never had a place I could call home that meant any more than a key to a house, apartment or hotel room. … Am I alien? Alien from what exactly? Perhaps my home is my dream city, more real than my waking life precisely because it has no relation to waking life…"
William S. Burroughs
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"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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"Nothing exists until or unless it is observed. An artist is making something exist by observing it. And his hope for other people is that they will also make it exist by observing it. I call it 'creative observation.' Creative viewing."
William S. Burroughs Ports of Entry: William S. Burroughs and the Arts
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"The first and most important thing an individual can do is to become an individual again, decontrol himself, train himself as to what is going on and win back as much independent ground for himself as possible"
William S. Burroughs
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"“The first and most important thing an individual can do is to become an individual again, decontrol himself, train himself as to what is going on and win back as much independent ground for himself as possible”"
William S. Burroughs
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"“A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on. ”"
William S. Burroughs
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"There couldn't be a society of people who didn't dream. They'd be dead in two weeks."
William S. Burroughs
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"After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it. I sure as hell wouldn't want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military."
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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"Thinking is not enough. There is no final enough of wisdom, experience - any... thing."
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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"In deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality."
William S. Burroughs
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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."
William S. Burroughs
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"No body of knowledge needs an organizational policy. Organizational policy can only impede the advancement of knowledge. There is a basic incompatibility between any organization and freedom of thought."
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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"You can't fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal."
William S. Burroughs
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"You must learn to exist with no religion, no country, no allies. You must learn to live alone in silence."
William S. Burroughs
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"Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer."
William S. Burroughs
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"Virtue is simply happiness, and happiness is a by-product of function. You are happy when you are functioning."
William S. Burroughs
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