A Quote by William S. Burroughs

[Death is] a gimmick. It's the time-birth-death gimmick. Can't go on much longer, too many people are wising up. — © William S. Burroughs
[Death is] a gimmick. It's the time-birth-death gimmick. Can't go on much longer, too many people are wising up.
The Orgasmic Death Gimmick is rather complicated. It could be called the whole birth-death cycle of action, persuading people that birth and death are realities.
Luther Vandross was doing fine, but he said, "Man, I want to do my own project." So he got us all to do a demo, and that demo was "Never Too Much." It took him a year and a half to get signed, because he didn't have a gimmick. The record companies were looking for his gimmick. They said, "What's your gimmick?" He said, "I sing. That's my gimmick." Anyway, he finally got signed and the record was released, and the rest was history.
All my songs were solo voices. Just me singing. In fact, that was the gimmick - no gimmick. Just singing straight with not too much background.
Rule No. 1 is you can't be fake. If you're fake, you become a gimmick and you're selling a gimmick; a little gimmick is cool, this is entertainment. But when you base your stuff on mostly real stuff, you never run out of it because every day is a different adventure.
There is nothing to keeping a band together. You simply have to have a gimmick, and the gimmick I use is to pay them money!
With a gimmick, there isn't much substance. If you play to the crowd too much, it can go bad.
There is to me about this place a smell of rot, the smell of rot that ripe fruit makes. Nowhere, ever, have the hideous mechanics of birth and copulation and death -those monstrous upheavals of life that the Greeks call miasma, defilement- been so brutal or been painted up to look so pretty; have so many people put so much faith in lies and mutability and death death death.
We go from birth to death. Three out of ten follow life. Three out of ten follow death. People who rush from birth to death are also three out of ten. Why is that so? Because they want to make too much of life.
I think you can say anybody uses anything as a gimmick. Is Adele's not having gimmicks her gimmick? It's hard to say, isn't it? Really, I think that everybody has something that people like or that's great about them.
A great gimmick is a great gimmick, but on a dud, it just doesn't work. It comes down to talent.
Birth leads to death, death precedes birth. So if you want to see life as it really is, it is rounded on both the sides by death. Death is the beginning and death is again the end, and life is just the illusion in between. You feel alive between two deaths; the passage joining one death to another you call life. Buddha says this is not life. This life is dukkha - misery. This life is death.
Someone's killed 100,000 people. We're almost going, "Well done! You killed 100,000 people? You must get up very early in the morning! I can't even get down the gym. Your diary must look odd: 'Get up in the morning, death, death, death, death, death, death, death - lunch - death, death, death - afternoon tea - death, death, death - quick shower ...' "
With The Brood, it was cool because it had the music, it had the different look and at the time reality-based characters were really starting to take the forefront as opposed to the cartoon character stuff that you'd seen in the past. We were already into the Attitude era. It was kind of a gimmick, but it was a cool gimmick. It wasn't corny.
The greatest mystery in life is not life itself, but death. Death is the culmination of life, the ultimate blossoming of life. In death the whole life is summed up, in death you arrive. Life is a pilgrimage towards death. From the very beginning, death is coming. From the moment of birth, death has started coming towards you, you have started moving towards death.
One match that really sticks out for me, there's a bunch of matches with all the guys that I worked with. For me, when I got in the ring, I approached it as being real because I was a real character. I didn't have a gimmick name; I didn't have a gimmick finish.
Death is much simpler than birth; it is merely a continuation. Birth is the mystery, not death.
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. More info...
Got it!