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 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

• 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

• 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

• Although I enjoyed writing Film Music it was always a means to an end, in that it enabled me to keep a wife and family and write my classical music, which has always been my passion.

  

  Malcolm Arnold
  • Music
  • Writing
  • Family

• I'm a writer who simply can't know what I'm writing about until the writing lets me discover it. In a sense, my writing process embraces the gapped nature of my memory process, leaping across spaces that represent all I've lost and establishing fresh patterns within all that remains.

  

  Floyd Skloot
  • Writing
  • Nature
  • Lost

• Writing blurbs for books means you have to read the book, and it cuts into the business of bookselling. So every time I get a blurb from a bookseller, I try to write a thank you note.

  

  Gabrielle Zevin
  • Time
  • Writing
  • Business

• All art is propaganda, and ever must be, despite the wailing of the purists. I stand in utter shamelessness and say that whatever art I have for writing has been used always for propaganda for gaining the right of black folk to love and enjoy. I do not care a damn for any art that is not used for propaganda.

  

  W. E. B. Du Bois
  • Writing
  • Love
  • Art

• The first act is writing, the second act is filming, the third act is releasing. If you have to partake in the third act, it hurts the first act of the next one. It's like a prizefight. You get punched.

  

  Albert Brooks
  • Writing

• There are a lot of things that you don't realize that your parents are going through when you're a kid.

  

  Vanessa Williams
  • Parents
  • Kid
  • Realize

• Faith is a knowledge within the heart, beyond the reach of proof.

  

  Khalil Gibran
  • Heart
  • Faith
  • Knowledge

• Just know that if you want to be a boxer you're going to get your face beaten constantly but then you may end up being a Mayweather or an Ali at the end of the day.

  

  Kanye West
  • Up
  • May

• 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