Art & Creativity Quote by William Joyce

Mischief is doing double duty here: it is both the subject and the method. Joyce frames creativity as a practiced flirtation with the rules, not a grand rebellion. The key phrase is "just a little bit" - a calibration of risk. He is describing a writerly instinct to test the perimeter, to find the soft spots in authority where laughter can slip through. That matters because it recasts transgression as craft: you learn what a culture will tolerate by nudging it, then watching who winces.

The title Billy's Booger is doing deliberate work. "Booger" is childish body-humor, the kind of word that detonates decorum in classrooms and parlors. Joyce isn't claiming high-minded provocation; he's claiming the power of the low. By choosing the most unserious possible offense, he exposes how institutions manufacture seriousness through surveillance. The principal's office becomes a miniature censorship board, training kids early to internalize which subjects are "proper" and which are shameful.

There's also an origin-story subtext: trouble as credential. Writers often mythologize the first time language got them punished, because it proves words have consequence. Joyce isn't merely reminiscing; he's arguing that art's social function includes small, safe violations that keep a society from hardening into pure rule-following. In that sense, the anecdote is less about a booger joke than about the lifelong habit of locating power - and poking it where it least wants to be touched.