William S. Burroughs Quotes

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

• Writing
• Art
• Helping
• Paint
• Degrees

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Quotes to Explore

• There was a time when I was practicing law in New York and I wanted to find something else to do. So I ended up leaving the practice of law to pursue my art and it just happened to be out of Lego bricks.

  

  Nathan Sawaya
  • Up
  • Time
  • Art

• There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.

  

  Samuel Johnson
  • Great
  • Art
  • Happiness

• I think you have to learn for yourself how to write. I'm slightly mystified by creative writing courses - God love them - because I can't understand how you can explain a process that I find so baffling.

  

  Kate Atkinson
  • God
  • Writing
  • Love

• My understanding of films was just as much as any young girl who watches Bollywood films. I had no idea about the whole process of filmmaking, about dialogue writing, scripts, screenplay etc. I had probably gone to two or three film shoots in my childhood.

  

  Rani Mukerji
  • Writing
  • Girl
  • Understanding

• I don't feel that rap has been respected as an art form. Because people have seen rappers rap off the top of their heads, they don't think it is difficult.

  

  Ice T
  • People
  • Art
  • Think

• I would be pleased if someone would invent a pill to remove my impatience, moodiness, and occasional bursts of anger. But if they did, I wouldn't be able to write my novels or paint.

  

  Orhan Pamuk
  • Anger
  • Paint
  • Someone

• I was bringing the whole music, hip-hop, art, break dancing and urban cultural thing to the downtown table.

  

  Fab Five Freddy
  • Music
  • Art
  • Table

• The demand in India is to have a hit, which becomes a promotion for the movie and makes people come to the theater. You have five songs and different promotions based on those. But when I do Western films, the need for originality is greater. Then I become very conscious about the writing.

  

  A. R. Rahman
  • People
  • Different
  • Writing

• The art world is never going to be popular like the NFL, but more people are buying art and I think that's cushioning, to a great extent, our art-market cycles.

  

  Larry Gagosian
  • People
  • World
  • Great

• People say, 'How does having kids change your writing? Do you see the world through their eyes?' No - you just become a faster songwriter... In the old days, you'd be like, 'Oh I'm gonna work on this song for a few days.'

  

  Eddie Vedder Pearl Jam
  • People
  • World
  • Work

• I've been writing for a long time. I sat down to write my first novel in the middle of March of 1982.

  

  J. A. Jance
  • Time
  • Long
  • Writing

• A performance art piece is unprecedented. It is difficult to censor since it has a good possibility of never being done before.

  

  Jack Bowman
  • Good
  • Done
  • Art

• Writing is a solitary journey, so I am always excited to go out on book tour and meet readers one-on-one.

  

  Dan Brown
  • Writing
  • Book
  • Journey

• It's kind of a catch-22 now because since the 'Da Vinci Code,' I have access to places and people that I didn't have access to before, so that's a lot of fun for somebody like me, but I'm always trying to keep a secret. I don't want people to know what I'm writing about.

  

  Dan Brown
  • People
  • Writing
  • Trying

• As a storyteller, when you're writing a movie and when you're directing, you want to keep people entertained. That's the whole point, right? It has to be entertaining.

  

  Fede Alvarez
  • People
  • Writing
  • Movie

• A lazy man works twice as hard. My mother told that to me, and now I say it to my kids. If you're writing an essay, keep it in the lines and in the margins so you don't have to do it over.

  

  Gary Oldman
  • Writing
  • Kids
  • Mother

• I didn't necessarily have a total idea when I was writing the movie of where everything was going. I just wanted to have really realistic dialogue and write like people I knew talked. I tried to keep it very real.

  

  Zach Braff
  • People
  • Writing
  • Real

• My career? I never think of it as a 'career.' Art and music and all those things that I'm creating are just part of me.

  

  Yoko Ono
  • Music
  • Art
  • Think

• The heart of the theater is the play itself, how it dramatizes life to make it meaningful entertainment. To achieve depth and universality, the playwright must subject himself to intense critique, to know human character and behavior, and finally to construct art from the most mundane of human experience.

  

  F. Sionil Jose
  • Life
  • Heart
  • Art

• Constant conflict is actually often good politics. Because the more you can inflame your supporters the more likely they are to show up at election day. And if they're more inflamed than the other side, even if the other side has more people agreeing with it, you'll win, because your crowd will show up.

  

  Bill Clinton
  • Politics
  • Conflicts
  • Supporters

• I am not a total, complete nitwit when it comes to selling books. I promise you there will be unexpected things. Some of them I don't know yet. She's writing it all herself.

  

  Mary Matalin
  • Writing
  • She
  • Promise

• Best-selling writers should go to bookstores to say thanks to the booksellers, to meet fans, sign autographs, sign books, talk, whatever.

  

  John Grisham
  • Thanks

• The shadow of fear and uncertainty lies over most of us; for us the future seems far from being as clear and open as we believed it would be.

  

  Faith Baldwin
  • Future
  • Fear
  • Lies

• 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
  • Writing
  • Art
  • Helping