I'm creating an imaginary — it's always imaginary — world in which I would like to live.
Interpretation
The quote expresses the idea of crafting a personal, idealized reality through imagination.
William S. Burroughs suggests that the act of creation, particularly in art and literature, involves a strong imaginative component where one constructs a personal world that may not exist in reality. This reflects the idea that art is a means for individuals to escape and explore their desires and aspirations, transcending the limitations of the actual world.
In practice
During a speech about creativity, I might say, 'As William S. Burroughs once said, I'm creating an imaginary world in which I would like to live.'
God save the Queen and a fascist regime … 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 don’t 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.
To seek out beauty in our work is to make a pilgrimage of our labors, to understand that the consummation of work lies not only in what we have done, but who we have become while accomplishing the task.
It's much more fun to play something you're nothing like than what you are... It's much easier to hide yourself in a character.
The poignancy of a photograph comes from looking back to a fleeting moment in a floating world. The transitoriness is what creates the sense of the sacred
Preparing a character is the opposite of building-it is a demolishing, removing brick by brick everything in the actor's muscles, ideas and inhibitions that stands between him and the part, until one day, with a great rush of air, the character invades his every pore.
He has Van Gogh's ear for music.
When you say 'design,' everybody thinks of magazine pages. So it's an emotive word. Everybody thinks it's how something looks, whereas for me, design is pretty much everything.
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