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73010e2
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Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing.
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silence
loquacity
remaining-silent
reticence
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William S. Burroughs |
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5f86d1e
|
Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape.
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burroughs
escape
change
inspirational
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William S. Burroughs |
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77d6993
|
You were not there for the beginning. You will not be there for the end. Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative
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William S. Burroughs |
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3d6a13e
|
When you stop growing you start dying.
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growing
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William S. Burroughs |
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89c7467
|
The question is frequently asked: Why does a man become a drug addict? The answer is that he usually does not intend to become an addict. You don't wake up one morning and decide to be a drug addict. It takes at least three months' shooting twice a day to get any habit at all. And you don't really know what junk sickness is until you have had several habits. It took me almost six months to get my first habit, and then the withdrawal symptom..
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motivations
symptoms
junkie
addicts
withdrawal
drug-addiction
sickness
junk
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William S. Burroughs |
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ef7432f
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You know a real friend? Someone you know will look after your cat after you are gone.
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friends
friendship
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William S. Burroughs |
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d35a754
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After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say 'I want to see the manager.
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William S. Burroughs |
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363f597
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Love? What is it? Most natural painkiller what there is.
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William S. Burroughs |
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114e02f
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The junk merchant doesn't sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to his product. He does not improve and simplify his merchandise. He degrades and simplifies the client.
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William S. Burroughs |
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69fdc3f
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There are no innocent bystanders ... what are they doing there in the first place?
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responsibility
voyeurism
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William S. Burroughs |
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32b6e42
|
Panic is the sudden realization that everything around you is alive.
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paranoia
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William S. Burroughs |
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c240bd0
|
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.
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existance
reality
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William S. Burroughs |
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ecb10e4
|
Smash the control images. Smash the control machine.
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William S. Burroughs |
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56680cd
|
A cat's rage is beautiful, burning with pure cat flame, all its hair standing up and crackling blue sparks, eyes blazing and sputtering.
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William S. Burroughs |
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a62102a
|
Whether you like it or not, you are committed to the human endeavor. I cannot ally myself with such a purely negative goal as avoidance of suffering. Suffering is a chance you take by the fact of being alive.
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suffering
persistence
|
William S. Burroughs |
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b6468a4
|
Knowing you might not make it... in that knowledge courage is born.
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William S. Burroughs |
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35fbb03
|
Like all pure creatures, cats are practical.
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William S. Burroughs |
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4b9f4eb
|
as soon as you know you are in prison, you have a possibility to escape.
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William S. Burroughs |
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ef963d6
|
Confusion hath fuck his masterpiece.
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William S. Burroughs |
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d3363d0
|
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.
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|
careers
writers
|
William S. Burroughs |
|
afc84b0
|
Junk turns the user into a plant. Plants do not feel pain since pain has no function in a stationary organism. Junk is a pain killer. A plant has no libido in the human or animal sense. Junk replaces the sex drive. Seeding is the sex of the plant and the function of opium is to delay seeding. Perhaps the intense discomfort of withdrawal is the transition from plant back to animal, from a painless, sexless, timeless state back to sex and pai..
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pain
plant
opium
seed
junk
|
William S. Burroughs |
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a94a2e3
|
Last night I woke up with someone squeezing my hand. It was my other hand.
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William S. Burroughs |
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d978c0b
|
The cat does not offer services. The cat offers itself.
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William S. Burroughs |
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da593cc
|
In deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality. It is as final as the mountains: a fact. There it is. When you realize it you cannot complain.
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William S. Burroughs |
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aca6788
|
It is to be remembered that all art is magical in origin - music, sculpture, writing, painting - and by magical I mean intended to produce very definite results. Paintings were originally formulae to make what is painted happen. Art is not an end in itself, any more than Einstein's matter-into-energy formulae is an end in itself. Like all formulae, art was originally FUNCTIONAL, intended to make
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|
William S. Burroughs |
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ac756ea
|
I began to get a feeling (...) of being the only sane man in a nut house. It doesn't make you feel superior but depressed and scared, because there is nobody you can contact.
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|
nut-house
sane
insanity
|
William S. Burroughs |
|
51f08dc
|
It is not the intensity but the duration of pain that breaks the will to resist.
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|
William S. Burroughs |
|
3b4fde6
|
We have a new type of rule now. Not one-man rule, or rule of aristocracy or plutocracy, but of small groups elevated to positions of absolute power by random pressures, and subject to political and economic factors that leave little room for decision. They are representatives of abstract forces who have reached power through surrender of self. The iron-willed dictator is a thing of the past. There will be no more Stalins, no more Hitlers. T..
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William S. Burroughs |
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786ba22
|
danger is a biologic necessity, like dreams. if you face death, for that time, for the period of direct confrontation, you are immortal.
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|
William S. Burroughs |
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5cfd3c1
|
There is only one thing a writer can write about: what is in front of his senses at the moment of writing... I am a recording instrument... I do not presume to impose "story" "plot" "continuity"... Insofar as I succeed in Direct recording of certain areas of psychic process I may have limited function... I am not an entertainer..."
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writing-process
|
William S. Burroughs |
|
e5effc1
|
I was standing outside myself trying to stop those hangings with ghost fingers... I am a ghost wanting what every ghost wants-a body-after the Long Time moving through odorless alleys of space where no life is, only the colorless no smell of death...Nobody can breath and smell it through pink convolutions of gristle laced with crystal snot, time shit and black blood filters of flesh.
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William S. Burroughs |
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0a9d358
|
The American uppermiddle-class citizen is a composite of negatives. He is largely delineated by what he is not. - pg. 41
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William S. Burroughs |
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69866f9
|
Too perfect to be sexually attractive.
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|
William S. Burroughs |
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801c145
|
I am not a person and I am not an animal. There is something I am here for something I must do before I can go.
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|
William S. Burroughs |
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7418e32
|
When he smiled the fear flew away in little pieces of light...
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|
William S. Burroughs |
|
d70ccba
|
dream long enough and dream hard enough you will come to know dreaming can make it so...
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William S. Burroughs |
|
62e0bde
|
Evidence indicates that cats were first tamed in Egypt. The Egyptians stored grain, which attracted rodents, which attracted cats. (No evidence that such a thing happened with the Mayans, though a number of wild cats are native to the area.) I don't think this is accurate. It is certainly not the whole story. Cats didn't start as mousers. Weasels and snakes and dogs are more efficient as rodent-control agents. I postulate that cats started ..
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egypt
|
William S. Burroughs |
|
3dce11c
|
All over America, people were pulling credentials out of their pockets and sticking them under someone else's nose to prove they had been somewhere or done something. And I thought someday everyone in America will suddenly jump up and say, 'I don't take any shit!' and start pushing and cursing and clawing at the man next to him.
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revolution
insanity
|
William S. Burroughs |
|
c111118
|
I know this one pusher walks around humming a tune and everybody he passes takes it up. He is so grey and spectral and anonymous they don't see him and think it is their own mind humming the tune.
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William S. Burroughs |
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aa0165a
|
The study of thinking machines teaches us more about the brain than we can learn by introspective methods. Western man is externalizing himself in the form of gadgets.
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|
william-burroughs
naked-lunch
thinking
|
William S. Burroughs |
|
30ab469
|
If all pleasure is relief from tension, junk affords relief from the whole life process, in disconnecting the hypothalamus, which is the center of psychic energy and libido.
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|
|
William S. Burroughs |
|
8f5900b
|
People have nothing to say, but they are afraid of saying nothing, so what they do say comes out flat and vapid and meaningless. The shadow of death is on every face.
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|
|
William S. Burroughs |
|
e787ff2
|
Cat hate reflects an ugly, stupid, loutish, bigoted spirit. There can be no compromise with this Ugly Spirit.
|
|
hate-hatred
cats
|
William S. Burroughs |
|
5b8ec85
|
Is Control controlled by its need to control? Answer: yes.
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|
William S. Burroughs |