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Exlpore more Mortality quotes

"Let us think of people as starting life with an experience they forget and ending it with one which they anticipate but cannot understand."

"In one way, I suppose, I have been "in denial" for some time, knowingly burning the candle at both ends and finding that it often gives a lovely light. But for precisely that reason, I can't see myself smiting my brow with shock or hear myself whining about how it's all so unfair: I have been taunting the Reaper into taking a free scythe in my direction and have now succumbed to something so predictable and banal that it bores even me."

"The moment one is born, the 'saw starts cutting'. People consider it as death only when the wood breaks in two pieces [during funeral]. But it was being cut from the very beginning."

"It doth not hurt", whispered a faint voice, "She will take you life and all you are and all you care'st for, and she will leave you with nothing but mist and fog. She'll take your joy. And one day you'll wake and your heart and soul will have gone. A husk you'll be, a wisp you'll be, and a thing no more than a dream on waking, or a memory of something forgotten."

"But what really happens after you are dead - that is what I want to know?I cannot tell you Renisenb. You should ask a priest these questions.He would just give me the usual answers. I want to know.We shall none of us know until we are dead ourselves."
Explore more quotes by William S. Burroughs

"The dream is a spontaneous happening and therefore dangerous to a control system set-up by the non-dreamers."

"After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say 'I want to see the manager.'"

"The cat does not offer services. The cat offers itself. Of course he wants care and shelter. You don't buy love for nothing."

"I don't spot junk neighbourhoods by the way they look, but by the feel, somewhat the same process by which a dowser locates hidden water. I am walking along and suddenly the junk in my cells moves and twitches like the dowsers wand: 'Junk here!"

"Nobody's busting into YOUR apartment at three in the morning, are they? Well, then don't worry about what they're doing in South Korea and places like that. It's like the standard of living. Are you content to achieve your higher standard of living at the expense of people all over the world who've got a lower standard of living? Most Americans would say yes. Now we ask the question, are you content to enjoy your political freedom at the expense of people who are less free? I think they would also say yes."

"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..."

"A junkie runs on junk time. When his junk is cut off, the clock runs down and stops. All he can do is hang on and wait for non-junk time to start. A sick junkie has no escape from external time, no place to go. He can only wait."
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