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William S. Burroughs

"Nothing exists until or unless it is observed. An artist is making something exist by observing it. And his hope for other people is that they will also make it exist by observing it. I call it 'creative observation.' Creative viewing."

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"Nothing exists until or unless it is observed. An artist is making something exist by observing it. And his hope for other people is that they will also make it exist by observing it. I call it 'creative observation.' Creative viewing."

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Amber Hurdle

"For me poetry is an evasion of the real job of writing prose."

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Amber Hurdle

"A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness."

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Amber Hurdle

"At eight, he had once told his mother that he wanted to paint air."

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Amber Hurdle

"I have spent a good many years since-too many, I think-being ashamed about what I write. I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction or poetry who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God-given talent. If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that's all."

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Amber Hurdle

"He kept seeing the brains dribbling down the wallpaper. It wasn't the killing that stayed on his mind, it was the spilled talent. A lifetime of honing and shaping torn apart in less than a second. All those stories, all those images, and what came out looked like so much oatmeal. What was the point?"

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Amber Hurdle

"When you aren't satisfied with what has already been done, make something better. That is the greatest responsibility and the true freedom of creativity. The freedom is in that it doesn't need to complain."

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Amber Hurdle

"Fresh, solid ideas feel like gifts to writers, therefore every morning is Christmas."

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Amber Hurdle

"We write to shed our sorrows and give strength to our spirit."

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Amber Hurdle

"My pen beats faster as I write with my heart."

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Amber Hurdle

"How to Be a Poet (to remind myself)

Make a place to sit down. Sit down. Be quiet. You must depend upon affection, reading, knowledge, and skill—more of each than you have—inspiration, work, growing older, patience, for patience joins time to eternity.

Breathe with unconditional breath the unconditioned air. Shun electric wire. Communicate slowly. Live a three-dimensional life; stay away from screens. Stay away from anything that obscures the place it is in.

There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places. Accept what comes from silence. Make the best you can of it. Of the little words that come out of the silence, like prayers prayed back to the one who prays, make a poem that does not disturb the silence from which it came."

Explore more quotes by William S. Burroughs

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William S. Burroughs
"The study of thinking machines teaches us more about the brain than we can learn by introspective methods. Western man is externalizing himself in the form of gadgets."
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William S. Burroughs
"Smash the control images. Smash the control machine."
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William S. Burroughs
"A cat's rage is beautiful, burning with pure cat flame, all its hair standing up and crackling blue sparks, eyes blazing and sputtering."
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William S. Burroughs
"Two Lesbian Agents with glazed faces of grafted penis flesh sat sipping spinal fluid through alabaster straws."
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William S. Burroughs
"Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape."
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William S. Burroughs
"Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact."
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William S. Burroughs
"The best way to keep something bad from happening is to see it ahead of time... and you can't see it if you refuse to face the possibility."
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William S. Burroughs
"Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer."
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William S. Burroughs
"Every man has inside himself a parasitic being who is acting not at all to his advantage."
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William S. Burroughs
"Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing."
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