Writing Quotes by William S. Burroughs

I think all writers write for an audience. There is no such thing as writing for yourself.

— William S. Burroughs

Dennis Cooper, God help him, is a born writer.

— William S. Burroughs

All writing is in fact cut-ups. A collage of words read heard overheard. What else?

— William S. Burroughs

“And if you're doing a deal with a religious son of a bitch, get it in writing.”

— William S. Burroughs

I escaped the [Southern-writer] label because I didn't and don't write about the South.

— William S. Burroughs

“The purpose of my writing is to expose and arrest Nova Criminals.”

— William S. Burroughs

“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

“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

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

Life is a cutup. And to pretend that you write or paint in a timeless vacuum is just simply . . .…

— William S. Burroughs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“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

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

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

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

It is to be remembered that all art is magical in origin - music, sculpture, writing, painting - and by magical I…

— William S. Burroughs

“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

The consciousness-expanding drugs - the hallucinogens, such as cannabis, mescaline, LSD, Psylocybin - I think are useful to a writer up to…

— William S. Burroughs

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

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

So many people in the Western World are just automatically made ill by any sort of frank writing about sexual matters.

— William S. Burroughs

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

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

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

Like many nonconformist and beat generation writers, William S. Burroughs takes the outcasts of society as his theme.

— William S. Burroughs

Writers, like elephants, have long, vicious memories. There are things I wish I could forget.

— William S. Burroughs

[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

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

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

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

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

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