I think all writers write for an audience. There is no such thing as writing for yourself. — 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
Hemingway was a prisoner of his style. No one can talk like the characters in Hemingway except the characters in Hemingway. His… — 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
Naked Lunch was from about a thousand pages of material. A lot of it overflowed, then, into the cut-up trilogy including Nova… — 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
Forward steps are made by giving up old armor because words are built into you - in the soft typewriter of the… — 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
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
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
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
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
“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 Image
“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 Image
After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say 'I want to see the manager.' — William S. Burroughs Copy Share Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
You need a good bedside manner with doctors or you will get nowhere. — William S. Burroughs Copy Share Image
There couldn't be a society of people who didn't dream. They'd be dead in two weeks. — William S. Burroughs Copy Share Image
