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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.

William S. Burroughs

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.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Artifact Design Man Present Science Space Travel
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.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Alive Avoid Commitment Fact Goal Human Myself Negative Suffering
Life is a vacation from two eternities, who wants to waste those precious years worrying about what happens when you get back to forever?
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Forever Life Time Waste Yourself
Language is a virus from outer space.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Language One Liner Space Virus
When you stop growing you start dying.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Death Growth Stop Yourself
Smash the control images. Smash the control machine.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Control Image Machine
If you weren’t surprised by your life you wouldn’t be alive. Life is surprise.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Alive Life Surprise Yourself
A consumer society is about simplfying and degrading the consumer as well as the product.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Consumer Production Simplicity Society
I don’t care if people hate my guts; I assume most of them do. The important question is whether they are in a position to do anything about it.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Assume Care Hate Myself People Position
I miss you so much your absence causes me, at times, accute pain. I don’t mean sexually. I mean in connection with my writing.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Absence Connection I Miss You Myself Pain Time Writing
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.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Artist Creativity Existence Hope Myself Observation People View
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 and the military.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Hell Myself People Police Weapon
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.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Afford Energy Life Pleasure relief Spiritual
As soon as you know you are in prison, you have a possibility to escape.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Escape Possible Prison Yourself
Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

People Silence Verbal
How long does it take man to realize that he cannot want what he wants? You have to live in hell to see heaven.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Deep Hard Time Heaven Hell Live Man Realize Yourself

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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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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