Author

William S. Burroughs

17 quotations

About William S. Burroughs

William Seward Burroughs II was an American writer and visual artist. He is widely considered a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a postmodern author who influenced underground and popular culture and literature. Much of Burroughs's work is experimental and features unreliable narrators. Also noted as semi-autobiographical, his work often drew from his experiences with drug addiction, and featured his various places of residence as settings in much of his work. With Brion Gysin, Burroug…

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Topics: Knowledge Society Change Happiness Hope Learning
Happiness is a byproduct of function, purpose, and conflict those who seek happiness for itself seek victory without war.
Man is an artifact designed for space travel. He is not designed to remain in his present biologic state any more than a tadpole is designed to remain a tadpole.
After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it. I sure as hell wouldn't want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police an…
Admittedly, a homosexual can be conditioned to react sexually to a woman, or to an old boot for that matter. In fact, both homo - and heterosexual experimental subjects have been conditioned to react…

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Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape.
The way to kill a man or a nation is to cut off his dreams, the way the whites are taking care of the Indians: killing their dreams, their magic, their familiar spirits.
Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact.
Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape.
Most of the trouble in this world has been caused by folks who can't mind their own business, because they have no business of their own to mind, any more than a smallpox virus has.