A Quote by Genesis P-Orridge
I met William Burroughs in 1971. I got his address through a magazine and went to London to spend time with him.
Related Quotes
Norman Mailer thinks William Burroughs is a genius, which I think is ludicrous beyond words. I don't think William Burroughs has an ounce of talent.
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 tell this anecdote with tongue in cheek at the start of my book William Burroughs and the Secret of Fascination, but my academic involvement with Burroughs was entirely due to my tutor at Oxford, Peter Conrad. I was discussing with him the idea of staying on to do graduate work and when I tossed the name of Burroughs into the conversation - well, he let it fall loudly onto the floor, and proceeded to cross himself as if warding off an evil spirit. Since I was very ambivalent about an academic career in any case, that decided it for me.
I arrived in Tokyo in around '81. Around that time, I visited London for about two months - it was the period just before Malcolm McLaren released his solo album Duck Rock. I'd met him when he came to Japan, so I visited him in London and spent one evening with him and his girlfriend over at his house. He told me, "London is boring right now. You should go to New York." So he called a friend in New York, who I think was an old assistant or someone who helped him record early hip-hop stuff over there.
I knew William Burroughs really well, and I was always star struck being around him. I adored him.
It was at a vividly bad time in Norman Mailer's life that I met him, and a sort of water-treading time in mine. He had stabbed his wife, and I was a copy boy at Time magazine.
I was suckered in by the myth of the man [ William Burroughs] as much as by his work.
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 wrestled Jordan Burroughs two times - Jordan Burroughs had a hell of a time trying to take me down. I stopped his double leg numerous times. And he also, probably, fractured my sternum - from me trying to stop him.
Like many nonconformist and beat generation writers, William S. Burroughs takes the outcasts of society as his theme.
I've been dictating to my son, who's helping me on his computer. I'm spending a lot of time doing research - I've just got up to 1971, when I went crazy and dived through the window. My life is so full of interesting stories.
After I got kicked out of CalArts, I moved to Lawrence Kansas where my sister lived. I began working on A William S. Burroughs documentary. I had no idea it would turn into such a big film.
I met a woman who went through a very difficult personal crisis, and she was really bed-ridden for a long time, and 'Friends' got her through. I met a woman who had a brain injury while living in Europe, and 'Friends' got her through.
I never planned on doing a book about Paul Farmer or his organization. I met him in Haiti when I was on a magazine assignment. It's almost like his story sort of fell in my lap.
God was alive when this universe exploded into existence. He was alive when Socrates drank his poison. He was the living God when William Bradford governed Plymouth Colony. He was the living God in 1966 when Thomas Altizer proclaimed him dead and Time magazine absolutely absurdly put it on the front cover.
I wouldn't wish a night of 1971 television on my worst enemy. But the records of 1971, again, still live for us now. And they had the benefit at the time of having the kind of uninterrupted, unimpeded concentration of a huge generation of people. Because the only thing I wanted to spend money on when I was 21 was records.
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