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
How far would people get in physics if discovery was described as disgusting - "Your formula is disgusting and filthy"? Not very far.
If I had my way we'd sleep every night all wrapped around each other like hibernating rattlesnakes.
If everyone is to be made responsible for everything they do, you must extend responsibility beyond the level of conscious intention.
O death where is thy sting? The man is never on time...
Addiction is a disease of exposure. Doctors and nurses, for instance, have a high addiction rate.
The only possible ethic is to do what one wants to do.
Never interfere in a girl and boy fight.
As a young child I wanted to be a writer because writers were rich and famous. They lounged around Singapore and Rangoon smoking opium in a yellow pongee silk suit. They sniffed cocaine in Mayfair and they penetrated forbidden swamps with a faithful native boy and lived in the native quarter of Tangier smoking hashish and languidly caressing a pet gazelle.
The best way to keep something bad from happening is to see it ahead of time... and you can't see it if you refuse to face the possibility.
when I become death. Death is the seed from which I grow.
There couldn't be a society of people who didn't dream. They'd be dead in two weeks.
The simplest questions are the most difficult.
I meant that people will take anything that gives them a lift, whether it's alcohol or cocaine or the consciousness-expanding drugs or opiates. In Iran, until recently, they sold opium in shops legally, and they had 3,000,000 addicts in a population of 15,000,000. I don't believe that all those people were escaping from "complexes" or anything of the sort. They were simply exposed to it.
[Arab peoples] are stuck back thousands of years and they think they're going to get out with a TV set.