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1160079
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You know, they ask me if I were on a desert island and I knew nobody would ever see what I wrote, would I go on writing. My answer is most emphatically yes. I would go on writing for company. Because I'm creating an imaginary -- it's always imaginary -- world in which I would like to live.
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writing
imagination
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William S. Burroughs |
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20a276b
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The face of "evil" is always the face of total need. A dope fiend is a man in total need of dope. Beyond a certain frequency need knows absolutely no limit or control. In the words of total need: "Wouldn't you?" Yes you would. You would lie, cheat, inform on your friends, steal, do anything to satisfy total need. Because you would be in a state of total sickness, total possession, and not in a position to act in any other way. Dope fiends a..
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drug-addiction
evil
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William S. Burroughs |
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0161524
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This book is dedicated to the Ancient Ones, to the Lord of Abominations, Humwawa, whose face is a mass of entrails, whose breath is the stench of dung and the perfume of death, Dark Angel of all that is excreted and sours, Lord of Decay, Lord of the Future, who rides on a whispering south wind, to Pazuzu, Lord of Fevers and Plagues, Dark Angel of the Four Winds with rotting genitals from which he howls through sharpened teeth over stricken ..
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William S. Burroughs |
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1b5489c
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You see, control can never be a means to any practical end...It can never be a means to anything but more control...like junk..
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William S. Burroughs |
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d5223e7
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Like most qualities, cuteness is delineated by what it isn't. Most people aren't cute at all, or if so they quickly outgrow their cuteness ... Elegance, grace, delicacy, beauty, and a lack of self-consciousness: a creature who knows he is cute soon isn't.
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William S. Burroughs |
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033df67
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Well as, one judge said to the other, 'Be just and if you can't be just be arbitrary.' Regret cannot observe customary obscenities.
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William S. Burroughs |
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7f39cee
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You need a good bedside manner with doctors or you will get nowhere.
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junkie
medication
manners
drugs
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William S. Burroughs |
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cc3c6eb
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The cat does not offer services. The cat offers itself. Of course he wants care and shelter. You don't buy love for nothing.
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love
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William S. Burroughs |
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a5d48c8
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For seven days she lay in bed looking sullenly at the ceiling as though resenting the death she had cultivated for so many years. Like some people who cannot vomit despite horrible nausea, she lay there unable to die, resisting death as she had resisted life, frozen with resentment of process and change.
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nausea
resentment
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William S. Burroughs |
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bf51165
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Morphine hits the backs of the legs first, then the back of the neck, a spreading wave of relaxation slackening the muscles away from the bones so that you seem to float without outlines, like lying in warm salt water. As this relaxing wave spread through my tissues, I experienced a strong feeling of fear. I had the feeling that some horrible image was just beyond the field of vision, moving as I turned my head, so that I never quite saw it..
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William S. Burroughs |
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f2cc49b
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The 'Other Half' is the word. The 'Other Half' is an organism. Word is an organism. The presence of the 'Other Half' is a separate organism attached to your nervous system on an air line of words can now be demonstrated experimentally. One of the most common 'hallucinations' of subject during sense withdrawal is the feeling of another body sprawled through the subject's body at an angle...yes quite an angle it is the 'Other Half' worked qui..
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William S. Burroughs |
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9be5bb6
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While in general I avoid the use of torture - torture locates the opponent and mobilizes resistance - the threat of torture is useful to induce in the subject the appropriate feeling of helplessness and gratitude to the interrogator for withholding it. And torture can be employed to advantage as a penalty when the subject is far enough along with the treatment to accept punishment as deserved. To this end I devised several forms of discipli..
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William S. Burroughs |
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cb02764
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For years I wondered why dreams are so often dull when related, and this morning I find the answer, which is very simple - like most answers, you have always known it: No context ... like a stuffed animal set on the floor of a bank.
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William S. Burroughs |
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75272ed
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God save the Queen and a fascist regime ... a flabby toothless fascism, to be sure. Never go too far in any direction, is the basic law on which Limey-Land is built. The Queen stabilizes the whole sinking shithouse and keeps a small elite of wealth and privilege on top. The English have gone soft in the outhouse. England is like some stricken beast too stupid to know it is dead. Ingloriously foundering in its own waste products, the backlas..
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William S. Burroughs |
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d971cc8
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He remembers his fathers last words: "Stay out of churches, son. All they got a key to is the shit house. And swear to me you'll never wear a lawman's badge."
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William S. Burroughs |
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53924d8
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Death was in every sell of his body. He gave off a faint, greenish steam of decay. Lee imagined he would glow in the dark.
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William S. Burroughs |
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8fa0d69
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The simplest questions are the most difficult.
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William S. Burroughs |
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fb0f8ec
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My greatest strength is to have a great capacity to confront myself no matter how unpleasant. My greatest weakness is that I don't. I know that's enigmatic, but that's sort of a general formula for anyone, actually.
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William S. Burroughs |
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7d87694
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A junkie spends half his life waiting.
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junkie
drug-addiction
waiting
drugs
heroin
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William S. Burroughs |
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7436e29
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If you weren't surprised by your life you wouldn't be alive. Life is surprise.
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William S. Burroughs |
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8a9ae06
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Most people don't notice what's going on around them. That's my principal message to writers: for God's sake, keep your eyes open.
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William S. Burroughs |
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f45abf3
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Like many people who have nothing to do, he was very resentful of any claims on his time.
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William S. Burroughs |
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0b70353
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Hemingway said: 'It don't come anymore.' So where did it go?
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William S. Burroughs |
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b43f824
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Hip - Someone who knows the score. Someone who understands "jive talk." Someone who is "with it." The expression is not subject to definition because, if you don't "dig" what it means, no one can ever tell you."
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truth-telling
humor
junkie
reality-check
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William S. Burroughs |
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c22c16d
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Wouldn't it be great,as Scott Peck suggests, if all medical students had to undergo the symptoms and feeling of a spectrum of illnesses. From acute infections to terminal cancer - and Kuru, the laughing sickness. Just a month for each exposure, controlled of course, and a good heavy dose of excruciating pain. So they'll know what that feels like.
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William S. Burroughs |
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342cd10
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I don't know what falling in love for me is. The concept of romantic love arose in the Middle Ages. Now remember, the Arabs don't even have a word for love--that is, a word for love apart from physical attraction or sex. And this separation of love and sex is a western concept, a Christian concept. As to what falling in love means, I'm uncertain. Love, well, it means simply physical attraction and liking a person at the same time.
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love-as-a-western-concept
love
physical-attraction
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William S. Burroughs |
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3a72a87
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We are the cats inside. We are the cats who cannot walk alone, and for us there is only one place.
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dream
psychology
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William S. Burroughs |
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b481ab5
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Mohammed? Are you kidding? He was dreamed up by the Mecca Chamber of Commerce.
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William S. Burroughs |
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ae5c2a9
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There is nothing one fears more or is more ashamed of than not being oneself. Yet few people realize even an approximation of their true potential. Most people must live with varying degrees of the shame and fear of not being fully in control of themselves.
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William S. Burroughs |
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45fba54
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The boys eat happily looking into each other's eyes. Blood runs down their chins.
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William S. Burroughs |
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c76d351
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The ears were large, flaring forward, the eyes limpid amber, in which the pupil floated like a glittering jewel, changing color with shifts of the light: obsidian, emerald, ruby, opal, amethyst, diamond.
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lemurs
madagascar
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William S. Burroughs |
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1b4ff12
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Last night I encountered a dream cat with a very long neck and a body like a human fetus, gray and transluscent. I don't know what it needs or how to provide for it. Another dream years ago of a human child with eyes on stalks. It is very small, but can walk and talk "Don't you want me?" Again, I don't know how to care for the child. But I am dedicated to protecting and nurturing him at any cost! It is the function of the Guardian to protec..
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mutant
cat
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William S. Burroughs |
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8ac771a
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He is a boy sleeping against the mosque wall, ejaculates wet dreaming into a thousand cunts pink and smooth as sea shells...
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William S. Burroughs |
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3ead00a
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I am trying like Klee, to create something that will have a life of its own, that can put me in real danger, a danger which I willingly take on myself.
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klee
painting
guns
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William S. Burroughs |
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19b9e5b
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Naked Mr. America, burning frantic with self bone love, screams out: "My asshole confounds the Louvre! I fart ambrosia and shit pure gold turds! My cock spurts soft diamonds in the morning sunlight!"
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William S. Burroughs |
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393a7d7
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Squatting on old bones and excrement and rusty iron, in a white blaze of heat, a panorama of naked idiots stretches to the horizon. Complete silence - their speech centres are destroyed - except for the crackle of sparks and the popping of singed flesh as they apply electrodes up and down the spine. White smoke of burning flesh hangs in the motionless air. A group of children have tied an idiot to a post with barbed wire and built a fire be..
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pain
idiot
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William S. Burroughs |
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a42808d
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The rudeness of many Americans depressed him, a rudeness based on a solid ignorance of the whole concept of manners, and on the proposition that for social purposes, all people are more or less equal and interchangeable.
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William S. Burroughs |
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1fe5755
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I do spend a great deal of time alone. I'm not very gregarious. I don't like parties and miscellaneous gatherings with no particular purpose. I think parties are largely a mistake. The bigger they are the more mistaken they are.
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William S. Burroughs |
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bcbf213
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If you wish to alter or annihilate a pyramid of numbers in a serial relation, you alter or remove the bottom number. If we wish to annihilate the junk pyramid, we must start with the bottom of the pyramid: the Addict in the Street, and stop tilting quixotically for the "higher ups" so called, all of whom are immediately replaceable. The addict in the street who must have junk to live is the one irreplaceable factor in the junk equation. Whe..
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William S. Burroughs |
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d97dbac
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I began to get a feeling familiar to me from my bartending days of being the only sane man in a nuthouse. It doesn't make you feel superior but depressed and scared, because there is nobody you can contact.
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sanity
loneliness
fear
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William S. Burroughs |
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15787ce
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I was lying there trying to control the fear. I did not know much about this uremic poisoning. A woman I'd known slightly in Texas had died of it after drinking a bottle of beer ever hour, night and day, for two weeks.
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William S. Burroughs |
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231da1b
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Kick is seeing things from a special angle. Kick is momentary freedom from the claims of the aging, cautious, nagging, fightened flesh.
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freedom
junkie
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William S. Burroughs |
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64a7e90
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Take a shot in front of D.L. Probing for a vein in my dirty bare foot... Junkies have no shame... They are impervious to the repugnance of others. It is doubtful if shame can exist in the absence of sexual libido... The junky's shame disappears with his nonsexual sociability which is also dependent on libido...
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William S. Burroughs |
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0437144
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If you are asking me what the individual can do right now, in a political sense, I'd have to say he can't do all that much. Speaking for myself, I am more concerned with the transformation of the individual, which to me is much more important than the so-called political revolution.
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transformation-of-the-individual
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William S. Burroughs |