William S. Burroughs Quotes

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. Notice what's going on around you.'

William S. Burroughs

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Quotes to Explore

• If only one in 1,000 people that I talk to goes on to write a good book, that's one more good book that I've helped along... and maybe it will be a book I love myself five or 10 years down the line.

  

  Garth Nix
  • People
  • Good
  • Love

• People are overwhelmed looking up at the Mount Everest of environmental challenges that we face. But you put one foot in front of the other and you recognize that not everyone is Sir Edmund Hillary.

  

  Ed Begley, Jr.
  • People
  • Up
  • Challenges

• It's populated by people who, by and large, have terrific communication skills. Every day is an extraordinary day. For me, it was just a great area for storytelling.

  

  Aaron Sorkin
  • People
  • Great
  • Day

• I like to put a stake in people, because I know people helped me.

  

  Larry King
  • People
  • Know
  • Me

• It really bugs me the way people criticise how actors look. We're not models. Models exist.

  

  Natalie Dormer
  • People
  • Me
  • Look

• AIDS is a horrible disease, and the people who catch it deserve compassion.

  

  Sam Kinison
  • People
  • Compassion
  • Deserve

• We saw very little of the real Jack Buck behind the microphone. He would touch people in ways that we will never know. Jack was much more than just an announcer.

  

  Ozzie Smith
  • People
  • Real
  • Know

• I'm a national security liberal, which I tell people because it's meant to sound absurd.

  

  Rachel Maddow
  • People
  • Sound
  • Security

• I didn't know Albert back then - I just learned to play that way. He and I were the only guys that played left-handed. Then left-handed people came from every direction.

  

  Otis Rush
  • People
  • Know
  • Play

• The misperception about the South is that everybody is racist, and all black people are victims, that what was prevalent in the '60s is only relegated to the South.

  

  Octavia Spencer
  • People
  • Black
  • Everybody

• I have never said that people 'should' engage in armed attacks on the United States, but that such attacks are a natural and unavoidable consequence of unlawful U.S. policy.

  

  Ward Churchill
  • People
  • Never
  • Said

• I sometimes joke, Paula, even paranoid people have enemies.

  

  Rahm Emanuel
  • People
  • Sometimes
  • Joke

• I don't want to forgive myself. That's why I hate psychoanalysis I think if you're guilty of something you should live with it. Get rid of it - how can you get rid of a real guilt? I think people should live with it, face up to it.

  

  Orson Welles
  • People
  • Up
  • Live

• Asian players train so hard. Most of the time, on Monday mornings, the only people you see on the range are Asians. I mean, only see Asians.

  

  Yani Tseng
  • People
  • Time
  • Train

• Why should Scotland be stopped from suggesting to the English people that we join a new union under new terms? Let's not try to dominate one another. Let's be a collection, like being in the pub with a kitty. When we vote in Scotland, we vote one way, but the other country votes another way and we always end up with what they vote for.

  

  Eddi Reader
  • People
  • Up
  • Country

• Character is the indelible mark that determines the only true value of all people and all their work.

  

  Orison Swett Marden
  • People
  • Work
  • Character

• They call people who love London 'Anglophiles' and people who love France 'Francophiles.' I'd be the New York version of that.

  

  T. R. Knight
  • People
  • Love
  • New

• I try genuinely, when I'm playing a character, to not judge them and just to inhabit someone as how one sees them. That being said, you also want to make sure that you don't blur the edges of people too much because humans are naughty and complicated beings.

  

  Eddie Redmayne
  • People
  • Character
  • Judge

• The military lead turbulent lives, but they are people like everybody else.

  

  William Westmoreland
  • People
  • Military

• The hard part of running a business is that there are a hundred things that you could be doing, and only five of those actually matter, and only one of them matters more than all of the rest of them combined. So figuring out there is a critical path thing to focus on and ignoring everything else is really important.

  

  Sam Altman
  • Important
  • Business
  • Running

• I actually got thrown into my Bar Mitzvah because my teacher, my Cantor, did not tell me that they would all say 'amen' at the end of each, for want of a better word, paragraph. And that threw me completely. I almost went into an Ella Fitzgerald sort of scat.

  

  Jeffrey Tambor
  • Teacher

• In any racing engine, the nearer you are to it disintegrating, the better it's performance will be

  

  Keith Duckworth
  • Performances
  • Racing
  • Engines

• We go into nature to transform.

  

  David Farr
  • Nature

• 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. Notice what's going on around you.'

  

  William S. Burroughs
  • People
  • Eye
  • Messages