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I think all writers write for an audience. There is no such thing as writing for yourself.
William S. Burroughs
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William S. Burroughs
Age: 83 †
Born: 1914
Born: February 5
Died: 1997
Died: August 11
Essayist
Novelist
Painter
Photographer
Poet
Prosaist
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Writer
St. Louis
Missouri
William Seward Burroughs II
Uilʹi︠a︡m Berrouz
William Lee
William Burroughs
Ouiliam Baroouz
William Seward Burroughs
Willy Lee
William S. (William Seward) Burroughs
Thing
Think
Thinking
Writers
Audience
Write
Writing
More quotes by William S. Burroughs
If a weaker baboon be attacked by a stronger baboon the weaker baboon will either (a) present his hrump fanny I believe is the word, gentlemen, heh heh for passive intercourse or (b) if he is a different type baboon more extrovert and well-adjusted, lead an attack on an even weaker baboon if he can find one.
William S. Burroughs
Perhaps all pleasure is only relief.
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 it's almost like automatic writing. A writer, on the other hand, can't help but know what he's going to write, because the activity demands a degree of premeditation.
William S. Burroughs
Kerouac opened a million coffee bars and sold a million pairs of Levis to both sexes. Woodstock rises from his pages.
William S. Burroughs
Criminal law is one of the few professions where the client buys someone else's luck. The luck of most people is strictly non-transferrable. But a good criminal lawyer can sell all his luck to a client, and the more luck he sells the more he has to sell.
William S. Burroughs
The nonconformist here may be beat down by life but still has a beauty in his or her longing for freedom and for an awakening of the mind.
William S. Burroughs
You were given the power to love in order to use it, no matter what pain it may cause you.
William S. Burroughs
Communication must become total and conscious before we can stop it.
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. Any film stands on its own, apart from whether it's based on a novel.
William S. Burroughs
I detest limitations of any kind, and intend to establish my ass some place where I am a virgin on the police blotter.
William S. Burroughs
We must find out what words are and how they function. They become images when written down, but images of words repeated in the mind and not of the image of the thing itself.
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
There is nothing one fears more or is more ashamed of than not being oneself. Yet few people realize even an approximation of their true potential. Most people must live with varying degrees of the shame and fear of not being fully in control of themselves.
William S. Burroughs
I was thinking about New Mexico, and I rounded the corner in New York, and there was a New Mexico license plate: New Mexico, land of enchantment.
William S. Burroughs
Thanks for the American dream, to vulgarize and falsify until the bare lies shine through. Thanks for a country where nobody's allowed to mind their own business.
William S. Burroughs
A John is different from a sucker. When you're with a sucker you're on alert all the time. You give him nothing. A sucker is just to be taken but a John is different. You give him what he pays for. When you're with him you enjoy yourself and you want him to enjoy himself too.
William S. Burroughs
People have nothing to say, but they are afraid of saying nothing, so what they do say comes out flat and vapid and meaningless. The shadow of death is on every face.
William S. Burroughs
Any belief in Creators or Purpose is wishful thinking. And when you point out that perhaps ALL thinking is wishful, reactions of intense irritation give evidence that we are not dealing with logic but with faith.
William S. Burroughs
No atomic physicist has to worry, people will always want to kill other people on a mass scale. Sure, he's got the fridge full of sausages and spring water.
William S. Burroughs
I escaped the [Southern-writer] label because I didn't and don't write about the South.
William S. Burroughs
