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
Jesus Christ said 'by their fruits ye shall know them,' not by their disclaimers.
I knew [Timothy] Leary, but barely knew, didn't really know Jan [Kerouac].
If the mortality rate seems high we must realize that Nature is a ruthless teacher. There are no second chances in Mother Nature's Survival Course.
A cat's rage is beautiful, burning with pure cat flame, all its hair standing up and crackling blue sparks, eyes blazing and sputtering.
A consumer society is about simplfying and degrading the consumer as well as the product.
I escaped the [Southern-writer] label because I didn't and don't write about the South.
Artists to my mind are the real architects of change
If after having been exposed to someone's presence you feel as if you've lost a quart of plasma, avoid that presence. You need it like you need pernicious anemia.
Perhaps all pleasure is only relief.
Quien sabe? Not me. The older I get the less I sabe, the less wisdom, maturity and caution I have.
It's the little touches that make a future solid enough to destroy.
Time is what death needs to grow people in.
When you get to be my age there are more and more people you have known that you miss. Brion [Gysin], Antony Balch, Ian Summerville are ones I think of right away I was quite close to.
NOTHING happens by coincidence.