All of William S. Burroughs friends pushed it forward and introduced me to one another. I was able to enter into that beat family for a while and document it.
I was taken by William Burroughs’ presence and intelligence from the first time I was introduced to him, by Lester Bangs in 1975. He was thrilling to listen to. When you heard him speak, you felt that you were privy to such a rare mind. Even in small-talk, he spoke with perfect economy of language. His shoots with me were very collaborative and it was an incredible opportunity to be able to photograph him over the course of twenty years.
I like simple writing. I'd rather read Hemingway than Burroughs.
I think it was when I ran into Kerouac and Burroughs - when I was 17 - that I realized I was talking through an empty skull. . . I wasn't thinking my own thoughts or saying my own thoughts.
Like many nonconformist and beat generation writers, William S. Burroughs takes the outcasts of society as his theme.
Bizarrely funny. . . Rarely is a documentary as well attuned to its subject as Howard Brookner's BURROUGHS, which captures as much about the life, work and sensibility of its subject as its 86 minute format allows.
Authors and artists are still afraid of breaking away as far as [William Burroughs] did. . . And he did it in the 50s!
when I become death. Death is the seed from which I grow.
Burroughs is the greatest satirical writer since Jonathan Swift.
When I was young, I knew William Burroughs really well. And William's secret desire, which he never quite did, was to write a straightforward detective novel.
I really think [William] Burroughs was onto something here, when he said, "Dreams are a biologic necessity and your lifeline into space. "
I was suckered in by the myth of the man [ William Burroughs] as much as by his work.
