Quotes by William S. Burroughs

William S. Burroughs

William S. Burroughs

American writer and artist

Lived from: 1914 - 1997

Category: Writers (Contemporary) Country: FlagUnited States

Born: 5 february 1914 Died: 2 august 1997

Quotes 21 till 32 of 32.

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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
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  • Now what sort of man or woman or monster would stroke a centipede I have ever seen? ''And here is my good big centipede!'' If such a man exists, I say kill him without more ado. He is a traitor to the human race.
    ― William S. Burroughs
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  • So cheat your landlord if you can and must, but do not try to shortchange the Muse. It cannot be done. You can't fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.
    ― William S. Burroughs
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  • The face of evil is always the face of total need.
    ― William S. Burroughs
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  • The people in power will not disappear voluntarily, giving flowers to the cops just isn't going to work. This thinking is fostered by the establishment; they like nothing better than love and nonviolence. 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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  • 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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  • There is the pleasurable orgasm, like a rising sales graph, and there is the unpleasurable orgasm, slumping ominously like the Dow Jones in 1929.
    ― William S. Burroughs
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  • They tend to be suspicious, bristly, paranoid-type people with huge egos they push around like some elephantiasis victim with his distended testicles in a wheelbarrow terrified no doubt that some skulking ingrate of a clone student will sneak into his very brain and steal his genius work.
    ― William S. Burroughs
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  • This is a war universe. War all the time. That is its nature. There may be other universes based on all sorts of other principles, but ours seems to be based on war and games.
    ― 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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  • Which came first the intestine or the tapeworm?
    ― William S. Burroughs
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  • Admittedly, a homosexual can be conditioned to react sexually to a woman, or to an old boot for that matter. In fact, both homo - and heterosexual experimental subjects have been conditioned to react sexually to an old boot, and you can save a lot of money that way.
    ― William S. Burroughs
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