"I knew that if I wrote a new book every six months or every year, if I continued to read great books, eventually I would write something worthy of publication. I understood I might be in my forties or my fifties or even my sixties, but I felt confident that it would happen"
About this Quote
Burroughs is selling patience with teeth in it: the kind of faith that comes not from destiny but from repetition. The sentence moves like a work plan disguised as hope. Every six months, every year: he’s not romanticizing the muse, he’s clocking in. And by tying writing to “continued to read great books,” he frames talent as a feedback loop, not a personality trait. You don’t wait to become worthy; you train your taste until it can bully your sentences into shape.
The subtext is quietly brutal. “Eventually” concedes mediocrity as a stage, maybe a long one. “Worthy of publication” implies a standard outside the self - editors, readers, the marketplace - and a willingness to be judged by it. There’s humility here, but also a kind of stubborn self-regard: he’s not asking if it will happen, only when. The age list (forties, fifties, sixties) name-checks the fear every ambitious person carries: that the window closes before the work opens. Burroughs answers that fear with a timeline that’s almost aggressively long.
Context matters because Burroughs’ public persona often reads as raw, confessional, effortlessly readable. This quote punctures that myth. It suggests the “voice” people praise was not discovered; it was manufactured through volume, reading, and endurance. It’s also a subtle critique of the culture that expects early genius. Burroughs is arguing for the late bloom as a deliberate choice: keep producing, keep consuming the best, and let time do what hype can’t - separate wishful drafts from real work.
The subtext is quietly brutal. “Eventually” concedes mediocrity as a stage, maybe a long one. “Worthy of publication” implies a standard outside the self - editors, readers, the marketplace - and a willingness to be judged by it. There’s humility here, but also a kind of stubborn self-regard: he’s not asking if it will happen, only when. The age list (forties, fifties, sixties) name-checks the fear every ambitious person carries: that the window closes before the work opens. Burroughs answers that fear with a timeline that’s almost aggressively long.
Context matters because Burroughs’ public persona often reads as raw, confessional, effortlessly readable. This quote punctures that myth. It suggests the “voice” people praise was not discovered; it was manufactured through volume, reading, and endurance. It’s also a subtle critique of the culture that expects early genius. Burroughs is arguing for the late bloom as a deliberate choice: keep producing, keep consuming the best, and let time do what hype can’t - separate wishful drafts from real work.
Quote Details
| Topic | Perseverance |
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