Most serious writers refuse to make themselves available to the things that technology is doing. I've never been able to understand this sort of fear.
Interpretation
Burroughs suggests that many writers are hesitant to embrace technological advancements, viewing this hesitation as a form of fear.
In this quote, William S. Burroughs expresses his bewilderment at the reluctance of serious writers to engage with technology. He perceives this refusal as a fear that limits creativity and the potential for innovation in writing, implying that embracing technological change is essential for growth and adaptation in the literary field.
In practice
During a writer's workshop discussing the impact of AI on creative writing.
God save the Queen and a fascist regime β¦ a flabby toothless fascism, to be sure. Never go too far in any direction, is the basic law on which Limey-Land is built. The Queen stabilizes the whole sinking shithouse and keeps a small elite of wealth and privilege on top. The English have gone soft in the outhouse. England is like some stricken beast too stupid to know it is dead. Ingloriously foundering in its own waste products, the backlash and bad karma of empire
Like most qualities, cuteness is delineated by what it isn't. Most people aren't cute at all, or if so they quickly outgrow their cuteness ... Elegance, grace, delicacy, beauty, and a lack of self-consciousness: a creature who knows he is cute soon isn't.
There is nothing more provocative than minding your own business.
Gentle reader, the Fountain of Youth is radioactive, and those who imbibe its poisonous heavy waters will suffer the hideous fate of decaying metal. Yet almost without exception, the wretched idiot inhabitants of our benighted planet would gulp down this radioactive excrement if it were offered.
Language is a virus from outer space.
One very important aspect of art is that it makes people aware of what they know and donβt know they know... Once the breakthrough is made, there is a permanent expansion of awareness. But there is always a reaction of rage, of outrage, at the first breakthrough... So the artist, then, expands awareness. And once the breakthrough is made, this becomes part of the general awareness.
Outlaws, like lovers, poets, and tubercular composers who cough blood onto piano keys, do their finest work in the slippery rays of the moon.
You can't expect someone born into a family with no music... to understand when I'm conducting the Schoenberg Variations.
When I'm dying, I want to think I did what I felt was best for the words I was writing. This may mean, at any time, that I won't be publishable anymore.
Dancing can reveal all the mystery that music conceals.
His outflung hands traced over the threads of his rug, passed loop by loop through some patient woman's hands. Or maybe she hadn't been patient. Maybe she'd been tired, or irritated, or distracted, or hungry, or angry. Maybe she had been dying. But her hands had kept moving, all the same.
I didn't start out to be a movie star. I started out to be an actor.
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