11 AUGUST 1997
More William S. Burroughs
1914 - 1997

"The deterioration of the impeccable boy"

From "Literary Outlaw, The Life and Times of William S. Burroughs," by Ted Morgan, (New York) Avon Books, 1988..

p. 494
"Burroughs in the old Beat Hotel days had devised a method for getting rid of people who dropped in by visualizing them outside his room. [Samuel] Beckett had an even better methodd: as the afternoon turned into evening and his apartment got dark, he neglected to turn on any lights and pretty soon everybody left."

p. 571
Quoted from a letter to Brion Gysin soon after Burroughs moved to Lawrence Kansas:
"I know you think of Kansas as Nowheresville and think I am caught up in nostalgia. Really it is the other way around.The whole concept of place is dead and it's nostagia to cling to it. . . . All this prattle from John [Giorno] and Felicity [Mason, an old friend of Brion's] about me being an urban person. . . . Neither of them hit on the important fact about urban living: the continual stream of second attention awareness. Every license plate, street sign, passing strangers, are saying something to you."

p. 576
"Anybody can write 'and then he shot himself' and shoot himself. I'm talking about someone who writes 'and then he was shot' and is himself shot by someone else."

"You can't dodge the Muse's checks. The Muse don't like welshers. A writer becomes a writer by PAYING."