Art & Creativity Quote by Augusten Burroughs

It’s not humility as much as a survival strategy: pre-disappointment as a form of control. Burroughs frames success as an accident that happened to him, not a destiny he marched toward, and that posture matters. In creative culture, confidence is often treated as a moral requirement, a brand asset. He flips that script. By announcing he was ready to sell “seven copies,” he punctures the romance of the breakout author and replaces it with the far more common pre-publication reality: you make the thing, you hope, you brace for indifference.

The advertising detail does heavy lifting. It’s not just a day job; it’s a whole identity shaped by persuasion, rejection, and metrics. Advertising trains you to expect that most pitches die quietly. Dragging that mindset into literature reveals the subtext: writing wasn’t a sacred calling insulated from the market. It was another gamble inside an economy that rarely rewards sincerity on schedule. The line also hints at class and stability: “keep working” signals a tether to a paycheck, the unglamorous ballast beneath the myth of artistic risk.

The emotional punch is in the reversal. Because he set the bar in the basement, genuine acclaim becomes “just great” without curdling into entitlement. It’s a quiet rebuke to the culture of inevitability that surrounds success after the fact. Burroughs is telling you how to live with uncertainty: expect little, do the work anyway, and let good fortune feel like a gift rather than proof you were always chosen.