William S. Burroughs Quotes

Tall, aren't you?" she said. "I didn't mean to be." Her eyes rounded. She was puzzled. She was thinking. I could see, even on that short acquaintance, that thinking was always going to be a bother to her.

All forms of art are consciousness expanders, and I am convinced that they will take us further, and more consciously, than drugs.

The thing that inspires me most is reading and just observing the people around me. I think those are the two things that make me want to write.

I think that my work is easy to understand because I am not a thinker, I am not a... How can I put it? I write the way I perceive, I guess.

I don't have confidence in my instincts, and I feel like I have to go through a very right-brain and left-brain process.

Writing is a concentrated form of thinking...a young writer sees that with words he can place himself more clearly into the world. Words on a page, that's all it takes to help him separate himself from the forces around him, streets and people and pressures and feelings. He learns to think about these things, to ride his own sentences into new perceptions.

Memory marks the horizon of our consciousness, imagination its zenith.

If writing is thinking and discovery and selection and order and meaning, it is also awe and reverence and mystery and magic....Authors arrive at text and subtext in thousands of ways, learning each time they begin anew how to recognize a valuable idea and how to reader the texture that accompanies, reveals or displays it to its best advantage.

I really like to write, so I can just relax and think about things and realize things and then try to express it on my computer.

...Listen to your own thoughts and feelings very carefully, be aware of your observations, and learn to value them. When you're a teenager—and even when you're older—lots of people will try to tell you what to think and feel. Try to stand still inside all of that and hear your own voice. It's yours and only yours, it's unique and worth of your attention, and if you cultivate it properly, it might just make you a writer.

The way I think of the psychedelics is, they are catalysts to the imagination.

Consciousness is the foundation of all thinking; and thinking is the foundation of all consciousness.

I think, if you want to grow a novelist, for that person to have a lot of boring time trying to entertain themselves is very important.

Reading is like thinking, like praying, like talking to a friend, like expressing your ideas, like listening to other people's ideas, like listening to music, like looking at the view, like taking a walk on the beach.

People think Paris [Hilton] is a ditzy blond, and I don't want to blow it for her, but she plays it really well. She knows exactly what she's doing. She's actually a pretty smart person. She's very cognizant of what she's doing, and she kind of plays that role, so people think she's some airhead but she's really not.

Thought maps existence; fantasy colors it.

The best reason to paint is that there is no reason to paint... I'd like to pretend that I've never seen anything, never read anything, never heard anything... and then make something... Every time I make something I think about the people who are going to see it and every time I see something, I think about the person who made it... Nothing is important... so everything is important.

To be the kind of writer you want to be, you must first be the kind of thinker you want to be.

You collect impressions from people, from life, from your own daydreams.

My work isn't about form. It's about seeing. I'm excited about seeing things, and I'm interested in the way I think other people see things.

When you think about people, you give them power.

I took to it very quickly. I'm very imaginative anyway, and it just set off that part of my brain. It made me focus in on the actors a lot more. I didn't have the distraction of looking at my surroundings.

Writing is thinking in slow motion.

I don't think writers are any smarter than other people. I think they may be more compelling in their stupidity, or in their confusion.

I actually started writing it because I was inspired by my own personal growth.