William S. Burroughs
William S. Burroughs
William Seward Burroughs IIwas an American novelist, short story writer, satirist, essayist, painter, and spoken word performer. Burroughs was a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author who wrote in the paranoid fiction genre, and his influence is considered to have affected a range of popular culture as well as literature. Burroughs wrote eighteen novels and novellas, six collections of short stories and four collections of essays. Five books have been published of his interviews and...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth5 February 1914
CountryUnited States of America
Criminal law is one of the few professions where the client buys someone else's luck. The luck of most people is strictly non-transferrable. But a good criminal lawyer can sell all his luck to a client, and the more luck he sells the more he has to sell.
The American uppermiddle-class citizen is a composite of negatives. He is largely delineated by what he is not. - pg. 41
We can translate word and letter into color - [Arthur] Rimbaud stated that in his color vowels, words quote "words" can be read in silent color.
danger is a biologic necessity, like dreams. if you face death, for that time, for the period of direct confrontation, you are immortal.
Everything Jack says is to be taken with considerable reserve.
Revolution in America begins in books and music, then waits for political operatives to 'implement changes after the fact.'
Many of my characters first came through to me as voices. That's why I use a tape recorder.
The forward step must be made in silence. We detach ourselves from word forms - this can be accomplished by substituting for words, letters, concepts, verbal concepts, other modes of expressions: for example, color.
For God's sake, keep your eyes open. Notice what's going on around you.
The line between inner and outer landscapes is breaking down. Earthquakes can result from seismic upheavals within the human mind. The whole random universe of the industrial age is breaking down into cryptic fragments.
The Planet drifts to random insect doom.
We are setting out to create new worlds, new beings, new modes of consciousness.
I feel that the change, the mutation in consciousness, will occur spontaneously once certain pressures now in operation are removed. I feel that the principal instrument of monopoly and control that prevents expansion of consciousness is the word lines controlling thought, feeling and apparent sensory impressions of the human host.
When people start talking about their bowel movements, they are inexorable as the processes of which they speak.