I think all writers write for an audience. There is no such thing as writing for yourself. — William S. Burroughs Copy Share Image
“The purpose of my writing is to expose and arrest Nova Criminals.” — William S. Burroughs Copy Share Image
“And if you're doing a deal with a religious son of a bitch, get it in writing.” — William S. Burroughs Copy Share Image
I escaped the [Southern-writer] label because I didn't and don't write about the South. — William S. Burroughs Copy Share Image
All writing is in fact cut-ups. A collage of words read heard overheard. What else? — William S. Burroughs Copy Share Image
Most serious writers refuse to make themselves available to the things that technology is doing. I've never been able to understand this… — William S. Burroughs Copy Share Image
It is to be remembered that the origin of all the arts-music, painting and writing-is magical and evocative; and that magic is… — William S. Burroughs Copy Share Image
My characters are quite as real to me as so-called real people; which is one reason why I'm not subject to what… — William S. Burroughs Copy Share Image
Life is a cutup. And to pretend that you write or paint in a timeless vacuum is just simply . . .… — William S. Burroughs Copy Share Image
“I don't think anyone could write a completely honest autobiography. I am sure no one could bear to read it: My Past… — William S. Burroughs Copy Share Image
“Most people don't notice what's going on around them. That's my principal message to writers: for God's sake, keep your eyes open.” — William S. Burroughs Copy Share Image
Writers, like elephants, have long, vicious memories. There are things I wish I could forget. — William S. Burroughs Copy Share Image
Like many nonconformist and beat generation writers, William S. Burroughs takes the outcasts of society as his theme. — William S. Burroughs Copy Share Image
“You know, they ask me if I were on a desert island and I knew nobody would ever see what I wrote,… — William S. Burroughs Copy Share Image
Kerouac and I are not real at all. The only thing about a writer is that he has written, and not his… — William S. Burroughs Copy Share Image
As a young child I wanted to be a writer because writers were rich and famous. They lounged around Singapore and Rangoon… — William S. Burroughs Copy Share Image
Writing prejudicial, off-putting reviews is a precise exercise in applied black magic. The reviewer can draw free-floating disagreeable associations to a book… — William S. Burroughs Copy Share Image
England has the most sordid literary scene I've ever seen. They all meet in the same pub. This guy's writing a foreword… — William S. Burroughs Copy Share Image
Speaking for myself, art differs from writing in that I never know what I'm going to paint until I paint it, so… — William S. Burroughs Copy Share Image
Always remember, there's no point trying to be faithful to the book because film and writing are just two completely different things.… — William S. Burroughs Copy Share Image
There is only one thing a writer can write about: what is in front of his senses at the moment of writing...… — William S. Burroughs Copy Share Image
It is to be remembered that all art is magical in origin - music, sculpture, writing, painting - and by magical I… — William S. Burroughs Copy Share Image
All political movements are basically anti-creative - since a political movement is a form of war. "There's no place for impractical dreamers… — William S. Burroughs Copy Share Image
The consciousness-expanding drugs - the hallucinogens, such as cannabis, mescaline, LSD, Psylocybin - I think are useful to a writer up to… — William S. Burroughs Copy Share Image
“A writer's will is the winds of dead calm in the Western Lands. Point way out he can start stirring of the… — William S. Burroughs Copy Share Image
He [Samuel Beckett] is great, a very great writer. Any modern writer is bound to be influenced by [James] Joyce. Of course,… — William S. Burroughs Copy Share Image
Yes, for all of us in the Shakespeare Squadron, writing is just that: not an escape from reality, but an attempt to… — William S. Burroughs Copy Share Image
So many people in the Western World are just automatically made ill by any sort of frank writing about sexual matters. — William S. Burroughs Copy Share Image
Most people don't see what's going on around them. That's my principal message to writers: 'For God's sake, keep your eyes open.… — William S. Burroughs Copy Share Image
In my writing I am acting as a map maker, an explorer of psychic areas, a cosmonaut of inner space, and I… — William S. Burroughs Copy Share Image
A writer does not own words any more than a painter owns colors. So lets dispense with this originality fetish… Look, listen… — William S. Burroughs Copy Share Image
It is indeed difficult to make a living as a writer, and my advice to anyone contemplating a literary career is to… — William S. Burroughs Copy Share Image
I miss you so much your absence causes me, at times, accute pain. I don't mean sexually. I mean in connection with… — William S. Burroughs Copy Share Image
Visual art and writing don't exist on an aesthetic hierarchy that positions one above the other, because each is capable of things… — William S. Burroughs Copy Share Image
You know, they ask me if I were on a desert island and I knew nobody would ever see what I wrote,… — William S. Burroughs Copy Share Image
You do an awful lot of bad writing in order to do any good writing. Incredibly bad. I think it would be… — William S. Burroughs Copy Share Image
I think if a writer is not endeavoring to expand and alter consciousness in himself and in his readers, he is not… — William S. Burroughs Copy Share Image
I started to write in about 1950; I was thirty-five at the time; there didn't seem to be any strong motivation. I… — William S. Burroughs Copy Share Image
[Jack] Kerouac was writing fiction. What he did when he wrote about me...he made me out with Russian Countesses and Swiss accounts… — William S. Burroughs Copy Share Image
“Control never be a means to any practical end. It can never be a means to anything but more control… Like punk.” — William S. Burroughs Copy Share
“Well as, one judge said to the other, 'Be just and if you can't be just be arbitrary.' Regret cannot observe customary obscenities.” — William S. Burroughs Copy Share
After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say 'I want to see the manager.' — William S. Burroughs Copy Share
For seven days she lay in bed looking sullenly at the ceiling as though resenting the death she had cultivated for so many years.… — William S. Burroughs Copy Share
Life is a cutup. And to pretend that you write or paint in a timeless vacuum is just simply . . . not .… — William S. Burroughs Copy Share
When all lies, deceit, pretense is stripped away, what remains? The truth of a painting, or a book or a man. — William S. Burroughs Copy Share
“There is no final enough of wisdom, experience - any fucking thing. No Holy Grail, No Final Satori, no solution. Just conflict. Only thing… — William S. Burroughs Copy Share
“For John Dillinger In hope he is still alive Thanksgiving Day, November 28, 1986 In hope he is still alive Thanks for the wild… — William S. Burroughs Copy Share
“Did I ever tell you about the man who taught his asshole to talk? His whole abdomen would move up and down, you dig,… — William S. Burroughs Copy Share
You need a good bedside manner with doctors or you will get nowhere. — William S. Burroughs Copy Share
There couldn't be a society of people who didn't dream. They'd be dead in two weeks. — William S. Burroughs Copy Share
I prefer cats to people, for the most part. Most people aren't cute at all, and if they are cute they very rapidly outgrow… — William S. Burroughs Copy Share
[Arab peoples] are stuck back thousands of years and they think they're going to get out with a TV set. — William S. Burroughs Copy Share
“It is not the intensity but the duration of pain that breaks the will to resist.” — William S. Burroughs Copy Share
![“I escaped the [Southern-writer] label because I didn't and don't write about the South.” quote by William S. Burroughs](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/854/william-s-burroughs-528_escaped_i-escaped-the-southern-writer-label-beca_2322127.png)
![“He [Samuel Beckett] is great, a very great writer. Any modern writer is bound to be influenced by [James] Joyce. Of course, by Beckett as well.” quote by William S. Burroughs](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/dd5/william-s-burroughs-528_beckett_he-samuel-beckett-is-great-a-very-great_1172288.png)
![“[Jack] Kerouac was writing fiction. What he did when he wrote about me...he made me out with Russian Countesses and Swiss accounts and other things I didn't have or didn't happen and so on.” quote by William S. Burroughs](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/894/william-s-burroughs-528_accounts_jack-kerouac-was-writing-fiction-what-he_2419652.png)
