When I worked on a magazine, I learned that there are many, many writers writing that can't write at all; and they keep on writing all the cliches and bromides and 1890 plots, and poems about Spring and poems about Love, and poems they think are modern because they are done in slang or staccato style, or written with all the 'i's' small.
Charles Bukowski
Related I like to open for a band as it brings on sort of a challenge and it makes things more interesting. ... KELLY JONES These poems, with all their crudities, doubts, and confusions, are written for the love of Man and i... DYLAN THOMAS When you begin to write poems because you love language, because you love poetry. Something happens ... C. K. WILLIAMS If I wasn't writing poems I'd be washing my hands all the time. SHERMAN ALEXIE I tended to write poems about both social and spiritual problems, and some problems one doesn't ... C. K. WILLIAMS I didn't learn much about writing at Sarah Lawrence, but I learned a lot about the sources of po... CAROLYN KIZER During the Gulf War, I remember two little third grade girls saying to me - after I read them some p... NAOMI SHIHAB NYE I write poetry on my iPhone. I've got about 100 poems on there. AARON NEVILLE I've reached a point in life where it would be easy to let down my guard and write simple imagis... MAXINE KUMIN Early on, if I was alone two three nights in a row, I'd start writing poems about suicide. JACK NICHOLSON I'm a happy camper when I'm doing both: writing and art every day, along with a dose of read... MARGE SIMON Writing is total grunt work. A lot of people think it's all about sitting and waiting for the mu... JODI PICOULT Starting after 60, I thought, 'I'm not going to be able to write a book of poems on the 70s.... JUDITH VIORST People ask me what I'm writing. They think I'm Sandra Tsing Loh. Or they ask about stand-up.... SANDRA OH I've been writing poems since I was in the Navy - to Rosalynn. I found I could say things in poe... JIMMY CARTER Readers are what it's all about, aren't they? If not, why am I writing? EVAN HUNTER There is some humour in 'Family Values.' I don't want everyone to think it's not goi... WENDY COPE I’ve tried so hard to stay away from you,” he whispered one night, cuddling her while the moonli... LISA KLEYPAS To me, the great joy of writing is discovering. Most writers are told to write about what they know,... TOM WOLFE I don't expect you'll hear me writing any poems to the greater glory of Ronald and Nancy Rea... ROBERT PENN WARREN When I go to the shore, I take along the poems of Pablo Neruda. I suppose it's because the poems... TOM ROBBINS The act of song writing and recording became one and the same to me; because I essentially recorded ... ADAM GOLDBERG I work with a lot of young people who have poems that are changing their lives, that they're eag... TRACY K. SMITH Many days I don't write any code at all, and some days I spend all day writing code. LARRY WALL I'm happy to stick with my persona. There are themes of love lost and love regained, but the mai... BILLY COLLINS It took me 14 years to write poems about Vietnam. I had never thought about writing about it, and in... YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA These poems, with all their crudities, doubts, and confusions, are written for the love of Man and i... DYLAN THOMAS Writers don't write writing, they write reading. When I was a kid, I read four or five books a w... AVI When I started writing about vampires, I swore that I wouldn't touch the 'Dracula' legen... JEANIENE FROST There's not too much difference between writing a picture book and writing a collection of a hun... JACK PRELUTSKY To me, writing and composing are much more like painting, about colors and brushes; I don't use ... JAMES HORNER If I write badly about blacks, homosexuals and women, it is because of these who I met were that. Th... CHARLES BUKOWSKI I started out in life as a poet; I was only writing poetry all through my 20s. It wasn't until I... PAUL AUSTER It's women writing about all kinds of things. They write their memoirs and life stories; some women ... KATHY WADE I think one of the things I was shocked about was how interested the world is in 'American Idol&... NICKI MINAJ As long as I can remember, I've been writing - first poems, then stories, and by my early teenag... NATHANIEL PHILBRICK If I'm writing about a modern-day suburb, there's going to be details of the home and furnit... GENE LUEN YANG 'Skins' is about a group of teenagers in Bristol, and it's all about what they get up to... HANNAH MURRAY Take me to the height where success would seek my help to succeed! I ARE I started writing as a child. But I didn't think of myself actually writing until I was in colle... ALICE WALKER There are some different things I'm writing and developing, but I don't know where they'... ABBY ELLIOTT I started out really young, when I was four, five, six, writing poems, before I could play an instru... WILLIE NELSON I like poems you can tack all over with a hammer and there are no hollow places. JOHN ASHBERY Plot is a framework on which to drape other things. So once that's working, I can just let it go... PATRICK NESS I resent people who say writers write from experience. Writers don't write from experience, though m... NIKKI GIOVANNI During all of my writing career - this includes when I was writing plays and my other screenplays - ... ASGHAR FARHADI When I'm writing, I spend all my time in The Grocer on Elgin buying ready-made meals; I think th... SADIE JONES I can't recommend technical writing as a day job for fiction writers because it's going to b... TED CHIANG You know, I used to say, when people say, 'How do you think about what to write about in the poe... CALVIN TRILLIN I had several publishers, and they were all the same. They all wanted salacious. And everybody is wr... ANITA PALLENBERG When I'm writing a novel, one of the things I do is get big poster boards. They're actually ... ALEXI ZENTNER It's often hilarious to me that I'm writing about Tonga or some tropical place and there'... TIM CAHILL I've learned that, in many cases, people say, 'I want ground truth,' and they don't ... JOHN F. KELLY When I'm writing a song, it's just me and the songwriters. Then when the song is done, there... LUKE BRYAN I can't conceive of nursing babies and taking care of children and writing, too. I know there ar... ELLEN GILCHRIST All pictures are unnatural. All pictures are sad because they're about dead people. Paintings yo... DAVID BAILEY I've always preferred writing about grey characters and human characters. Whether they are giant... GEORGE R. R. MARTIN But in a lot of ways my poems are very conventional, and it's no big deal for me to write a poem... ANDREW MOTION When I think about my great conversations with Marlon Brando on the set of 'Morituri,' I thi... ERIC BRAEDEN Everyone thinks they're going to write one book of poems or one novel. MARILYN HACKER I had been writing poems and stories since I learned to make letters. I had placed poems in a hardco... JEFF LINDSAY I'm just writing about people. People are dark and complicated. I'm trying to tell the truth... DAVID LINDSAY-ABAIRE The number of people writing poems is vast, and their reasons for doing so are many, that much can b... MARK STRAND I'm writing about real things. Real people. Real characters. You have to believe what I write ab... LOU REED I hear so many writers say - and these are writers that I trust completely - 'I just started hea... KAREN JOY FOWLER A lot of comedians get a bad rep once they have kids and that's all they talk about, and people ... TIG NOTARO Oh, there's so much ego with men; in their head, they can't possibly think about Tesco's... LESLEY MANVILLE I love love songs, but sometimes it's okay to just be young and talk about something other than ... MAREN MORRIS I do believe that we've a responsibility to try to acknowledge the range, both geographic and gr... PAUL MULDOON I can't understand these chaps who go round American universities explaining how they write poem... PHILIP LARKIN I can tell you, because I serve on so many nonprofit boards - where half of us are academics and hal... PAUL SAMUELSON When I was 13, I started writing songs, and it fell into my lap all of a sudden. I wrote poems and j... KELSEA BALLERINI Writers don't make good spouses. When I am writing, I'm not a good wife. I shut myself away,... CLAIRE TOMALIN I think plays, like books, are endemic. They grow out of the soil of the writer and the place he'... PETER SHAFFER I didn't think about whether I was writing poems. I was thinking. And the more I was thinking, the m... DAVID ANTIN If you read Keats's poems, they're often full of doubts and anxieties. They can be quite tou... JANE CAMPION I work on words quite separately to music. They're both ongoing, and I don't ever feel like ... P. J. HARVEY I prefer the absurdity of writing poems to the absurdity of not writing poems. WISłAWA SZYMBORSKA You don't help people in your poems. I've been trying to help people all my life - that'... CHARLES OLSON I think I felt at some point that I couldn't understand poetry or that it was beyond me or it di... NATASHA TRETHEWEY I need to have some depth in my characters. That's why they are all Bengalis. I can't imagin... UPAMANYU CHATTERJEE I'm all for poetry catching up with technology, and just as there are iTunes, I think we should ... BILLY COLLINS It was always a dream of mine. When I was in high school I used to write poems for my friends. And t... CYNTHIA VELENO It was always a dream of mine. When I was in high school I used to write poems for my friends. And t... CYNTHIA VELENO There's so many kids in the world who are told, 'You can't do this, you can't do tha... NATE ROBINSON I can't complain that I've had a public all through my writing life, but people don't qu... ALAN BENNETT I write every day. Most weekdays, I write about ten hours a day. That doesn't mean eight hours o... JONATHAN MABERRY The wonderful thing about writing for theatre is you can go anywhere you want with the language. The... SAM SHEPARD All I'm writing is just what I feel, that's all. I just keep it almost naked. And probably t... JIMI HENDRIX So many guys are so conservative with their hair, and I always joke with all my buddies when they me... TOM BRADY There's a variety and depth to the song topics I get to write about in children's music and ... LISA LOEB I went on all over the States, ranting poems to enthusiastic audiences that, the week before, had be... DYLAN THOMAS I don't worry about protein. I don't worry about all that. I'm from old school. I grew u... HERSCHEL WALKER I can't say I'm particularly happy about all the spam and the viruses and the equivalent tha... VINT CERF I've written about 15 screenplays and they all sold - they were all sold on pitches. BRUCE VILANCH Literature has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. I can't think back before a t... ALEXANDRA ADORNETTO Poems mesmerized me, and I felt better when I was writing them, or trying to - more in touch with so... EDWARD HIRSCH I don't know if it's good or bad, but when I first started writing I imitated the narrative ... KEVIN WILSON I've learned things about the craft of writing and about structuring a book and about character ... KHALED HOSSEINI I think it's all about the people who listen to your music, and loving playing and writing. Once... GABRIELLE APLIN
More Charles Bukowski
Having a bunch of cats around is good. If you're feeling bad, you just look at the cats, you'... CHARLES BUKOWSKI The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take... CHARLES BUKOWSKI There are women who can make you feel more with their bodies and their souls, but these are the exac... CHARLES BUKOWSKI the way to create art is to burn and destroy ordinary concepts and to substitute them with... CHARLES BUKOWSKI In the old days, before I was married, or knew a lot of women, I would just pull down all the shades... CHARLES BUKOWSKI Can you remember who you were, before the world told you who you should be? CHARLES BUKOWSKI Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead. CHARLES BUKOWSKI Understand me. I’m not like an ordinary world. I have my madness, I live in another dimension and ... CHARLES BUKOWSKI I had noticed that both in the very poor and very rich extremes of society the mad were often allowe... CHARLES BUKOWSKI Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I'm not going to make it, but you laugh... CHARLES BUKOWSKI Do you hate people?” “I don't hate them...I just feel better when they're not around. CHARLES BUKOWSKI when I am feeling low all i have to do is watch my cats and my courage CHARLES BUKOWSKI animals never worry about Heaven or Hell. neither do I. maybe that's why we get along CHARLES BUKOWSKI There's nothing like privacy. You know, I like people. It's nice that they might like my books and a... CHARLES BUKOWSKI For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't ... CHARLES BUKOWSKI I was a man who thrived on solitude; without it I was like another man without food or water. Each d... CHARLES BUKOWSKI being alone never felt right. sometimes it felt good, but it never felt right. CHARLES BUKOWSKI I've never been lonely. I've been in a room -- I've felt suicidal. I've been depressed. I've felt aw... CHARLES BUKOWSKI Sex is kicking death in the ass while singing. CHARLES BUKOWSKI The shortest distance between two points is often unbearable. CHARLES BUKOWSKI I wish to weep but sorrow is stupid. I wish to believe but belief is a grav... CHARLES BUKOWSKI I loved you like a man loves a woman he never touches, only writes to, keeps little photographs of. CHARLES BUKOWSKI Find what you love and let it kill you. CHARLES BUKOWSKI My dear, Find what you love and let it kill you. Let it drain you of your all. Let it clin... CHARLES BUKOWSKI That is what friendship means. Sharing the prejudice of experience. CHARLES BUKOWSKI For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't ... CHARLES BUKOWSKI You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politic... CHARLES BUKOWSKI Show me a man who lives alone and has a perpetually clean kitchen, and 8 times out of 9 I'll show yo... CHARLES BUKOWSKI The whole LSD, STP, marijuana, heroin, hashish, prescription cough medicine crowd suffers from the W... CHARLES BUKOWSKI Well, people got attatched. Once you cut the umbilical cord they attatched to the other things. Sigh... CHARLES BUKOWSKI I killed four flies while waiting. Damn, death was everywhere. Man, bird, beast, reptile, rodent, in... CHARLES BUKOWSKI Strangers when you meet, strangers when you part -a gymnasium of bodies namelessly masturbating each... CHARLES BUKOWSKI I see men assassinated around me every day. I walk through rooms of the dead, streets of the dead, c... CHARLES BUKOWSKI Never get out of bed before noon CHARLES BUKOWSKI Show me a man who lives alone and has a perpetually clean kitchen, and 8 times out of 9 I'll show ... CHARLES BUKOWSKI I can relax with bums because I am a bum. I don't like laws, morals, religions, rules. I don'... CHARLES BUKOWSKI Writers have to put up with this editor thing; it is ageless and eternal and wrong. CHARLES BUKOWSKI The more cats you have, the longer you live. If you have a hundred cats, you'll live 10 times lo... CHARLES BUKOWSKI Somebody once asked me what my theory of life was, and I said, 'Don't try.' That fits th... CHARLES BUKOWSKI Genius might be the ability to say a profound thing in a simple way. CHARLES BUKOWSKI When everything works best, it's not because you chose writing but because writing chose you. It... CHARLES BUKOWSKI I guess the only time most people think about injustice is when it happens to them. CHARLES BUKOWSKI when we were kids laying around the lawn on our bellies we often talked CHARLES BUKOWSKI We're all going to die, all of us; what a circus! That alone should make us love each other, but... CHARLES BUKOWSKI we sat there smoking cigarettes at 5 in the morning. CHARLES BUKOWSKI What is your advice to young writers?” “Drink, fuck and smoke plenty of cigarettes. CHARLES BUKOWSKI News travels fast in places where nothing much ever happens. CHARLES BUKOWSKI The Genius Of The Crowd there is enough treachery, hatred violence absurdity in the avera... CHARLES BUKOWSKI What my character is or how many jails I have lounged in, or wards or walls or wassails, how many lo... CHARLES BUKOWSKI you boys can keep your virgins give me hot old women in high heels with asses that forgo... CHARLES BUKOWSKI The telephone is needed for Emergency purposes only These people are not Emergencies,... CHARLES BUKOWSKI Love is a form of prejudice. You love what you need, you love what makes you feel good, you love wha... CHARLES BUKOWSKI there's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I'm too clever, I only let him ou... CHARLES BUKOWSKI I kept writing not because I felt I was so good, but because I felt they were so bad, including Shak... CHARLES BUKOWSKI and our few good times will be rare because we have the critical sense and are not easy to fool... CHARLES BUKOWSKI If you have the ability to love, love yourself first. CHARLES BUKOWSKI I do not like the human race. I don't like their heads, I don't like their faces, I don'... CHARLES BUKOWSKI Censorship is the tool of those who have the need to hide actualities from themselves and from other... CHARLES BUKOWSKI Joan of Arc had style. Jesus had style. CHARLES BUKOWSKI The male, for all his bravado and exploration, is the loyal one, the one who generally feels love. T... CHARLES BUKOWSKI The free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it - basically because you feel good, very good,... CHARLES BUKOWSKI I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there. CHARLES BUKOWSKI Bad taste creates many more millionaires than good taste. CHARLES BUKOWSKI I heard an airplane passing overhead. I wished I was on it. CHARLES BUKOWSKI We don’t even ask happiness, just a little less pain. CHARLES BUKOWSKI To experience real agony is something hard to write about, impossible to understand while it grips y... CHARLES BUKOWSKI my mother, poor fish, wanting to be happy, beaten two or three times a week, telling me to... CHARLES BUKOWSKI Poetry is what happens when nothing else can. CHARLES BUKOWSKI There's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I'm too tough for him, I say, sta... CHARLES BUKOWSKI A love like that was a serious illness, an illness from which you never entirely recover. CHARLES BUKOWSKI The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones ... CHARLES BUKOWSKI He asked, "What makes a man a writer?" "Well," I said, "it's simple. You either get it down on paper... CHARLES BUKOWSKI What a weary time those years were -- to have the desire and the need to live but not the ability. CHARLES BUKOWSKI I care for you, darling, I love you, the only reason I fucked L. is because you fucked Z. ... CHARLES BUKOWSKI She's mad, but she's magic. There's no lie in her fire. CHARLES BUKOWSKI If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean losing girlfrie... CHARLES BUKOWSKI I'd decided the campus was just a place to hide. There were some campus freaks who stayed on forever... CHARLES BUKOWSKI It was better for me when I could imagine greatness in others, even if it wasn't always there. CHARLES BUKOWSKI what matters most is how well you walk through the fire CHARLES BUKOWSKI Look, let me put it this way: with me, you’re number one and there isn’t even a number two. CHARLES BUKOWSKI I don't write so much now. I'm getting on 33, pot belly and creeping dementia. CHARLES BUKOWSKI I have no definite talent or trade, and how I stay alive is largely a matter of magic. CHARLES BUKOWSKI We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it d... CHARLES BUKOWSKI The thing that I fear discriminating against is humor and truth. CHARLES BUKOWSKI Show me a man who lives alone and has a perpetually clean kitchen, and 8 times out of 9 I'll sho... CHARLES BUKOWSKI We have wasted History like a bunch of drunks shooting dice back in the men's crapper of the loc... CHARLES BUKOWSKI people see so many movies that when they finally see one not so bad as the others, they think it's g... CHARLES BUKOWSKI Show me a man who lives alone and has a perpetually clean kitchen, and 8 times out of 9 I'll show ... CHARLES BUKOWSKI Nothing was ever in tune. People just blindly grabbed at whatever there was: communism, health foods... CHARLES BUKOWSKI The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take... CHARLES BUKOWSKI Of course it's possible to love a human being if you don't know them too well. CHARLES BUKOWSKI An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way. CHARLES BUKOWSKI I went to the worst of bars hoping to get killed but all I could do was to get drunk again. CHARLES BUKOWSKI Drinking is an emotional thing. It joggles you out of the standardism of everyday life, out of every... CHARLES BUKOWSKI Show me a man who lives alone and has a perpetually clean kitchen, and 8 times out of 9 I'll show ... CHARLES BUKOWSKI I don't like the clean-shaven boy with the necktie and the good job. I like desperate men, men w... CHARLES BUKOWSKI Humanity, you never had it to begin with. CHARLES BUKOWSKI I have not worked out my poems with a careful will, falling rather on haphazard and blind formulatio... CHARLES BUKOWSKI I only type every third night. I have no plan. My mind is a blank. I sit down. The typewriter gives ... CHARLES BUKOWSKI To do a dull thing with style-now THAT'S what I call art. CHARLES BUKOWSKI You begin saving the world by saving one person at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or poli... CHARLES BUKOWSKI people diminish me; the longer I sit and listen to them the more empty I feel but I don't... CHARLES BUKOWSKI Everything else just kept picking and picking, hacking away. And nothing was interesting, nothing. T... CHARLES BUKOWSKI A i urreni njerëzit? Unë nuk i urrej ata ... Unë vetëm ndjehen mirë kur ata nuk janë për... CHARLES BUKOWSKI If you want to know who your friends are, get yourself a jail sentence. CHARLES BUKOWSKI My writing is jagged and harsh, I want it to remain that way; I don't want it smoothed out. CHARLES BUKOWSKI Never envy a man his lady. Behind it all lays a living hell. CHARLES BUKOWSKI I will remember the kisses our lips raw with love and how you gave me everything y... CHARLES BUKOWSKI What a pitiful mass of dangerous nothing CHARLES BUKOWSKI there's no release, just gurus and self- appointed gods and hucksters. the more people say, the less... CHARLES BUKOWSKI I'm too careless. I don't put out enough effort. I'm tired. CHARLES BUKOWSKI it doesn't matter if Prince Charles falls off his horse or that the hummingbird is so seldom CHARLES BUKOWSKI The best thing about the bedroom was the bed. I liked to stay in bed for hours, even during the day ... CHARLES BUKOWSKI There is only one place to write and that is alone at a typewriter. The writer who has to go into th... CHARLES BUKOWSKI there is a place in the heart that will never be filled a space and even ... CHARLES BUKOWSKI Real loneliness is not necessarily limited to when you are alone. CHARLES BUKOWSKI unless it comes out of your soul like a rocket, unless being still would drive you to... CHARLES BUKOWSKI now it’s computers and more computers and soon everybody will have one, 3-year-olds will... CHARLES BUKOWSKI Beasts bounding through time. Van Gogh writing his brother for paints Hemingway tes... CHARLES BUKOWSKI dogs and angels are not very far apart CHARLES BUKOWSKI I remember awakening one morning and finding everything smeared with the color of forgotten love. CHARLES BUKOWSKI Most poets are young simply because they have not been caught up. Show me an old poet, and I'll ... CHARLES BUKOWSKI I didn't have any friends at school, didn't want any. I felt better being alone. I sat on a bench an... CHARLES BUKOWSKI My days, my years, my life has seen up and downs, lights and darknesses. If I wrote only and continu... CHARLES BUKOWSKI they simply never understand, do they, that sometimes solitude is one of the mos... CHARLES BUKOWSKI great writers are indecent people they live unfairly saving the best part for paper. ... CHARLES BUKOWSKI there is a loneliness in this world so great that you can see it in the slow movement of t... CHARLES BUKOWSKI My flesh looked like it wasn't trying. It looked like it hated being part of me. CHARLES BUKOWSKI Style is the answer to everything. A fresh way to approach a dull or dangerous thing To do... CHARLES BUKOWSKI You women have more holes than swiss cheese. CHARLES BUKOWSKI I'm becoming softer and softer. CHARLES BUKOWSKI y la fama y el amor nada más que un truco para atenuar nuestra herida. CHARLES BUKOWSKI Uno se puede encariñar de muchas cosas aparte del sexo pero es mejor si el sexo está presente de a... CHARLES BUKOWSKI las palabras bonitas como las mujeres bonitas se arrugan y mueren. CHARLES BUKOWSKI there are worse things than being alone but it often takes decades to realize this CHARLES BUKOWSKI your best men are drunks and your worst men are locking them up, your best men a... CHARLES BUKOWSKI there was something about that city, though it didn't let me feel guilty that I had n... CHARLES BUKOWSKI we must bring our own light to the darkness. CHARLES BUKOWSKI my beerdrunk soul is sadder than all the dead christmas trees of the world. CHARLES BUKOWSKI Thirty- eight years old and he was finished. He sipped at the coffee and remembered where he had gon... CHARLES BUKOWSKI I wanted the whole world or nothing. CHARLES BUKOWSKI You have to die a few times before you can really live. CHARLES BUKOWSKI My ambition is handicapped by laziness CHARLES BUKOWSKI Some people never go crazy, What truly horrible lives they must live. CHARLES BUKOWSKI I went to the kitchen and felt-up the turkey. CHARLES BUKOWSKI There is nothing that teaches you more than regrouping after failure ad moving on. Yet most people a... CHARLES BUKOWSKI Well it’s good to have a car like that, once in a while somebody’ll say, ‘why don’t you come... CHARLES BUKOWSKI If I write badly about blacks, homosexuals and women, it is because of these who I met were that. Th... CHARLES BUKOWSKI having nothing to struggle against they have nothing to struggle for. CHARLES BUKOWSKI There is a time to stop reading, there is a time to STOP trying to WRITE, there is a time to kick th... CHARLES BUKOWSKI I stopped looking for a Dream Girl, I just wanted one that wasn't a nightmare. CHARLES BUKOWSKI The place trembled with sound. I didn't need to do anything. They would do it all. But you had to be... CHARLES BUKOWSKI You're afraid of the audience, aren't you?" "Yes, but it's not stagefright. It's that I'm there... CHARLES BUKOWSKI To do a dull thing with style-now that's what I call art. CHARLES BUKOWSKI Sex is interesting, but it's not totally important. I mean it's not even as important (physically) a... CHARLES BUKOWSKI Before you kill something make sure you have something better to replace it with; something better t... CHARLES BUKOWSKI I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there CHARLES BUKOWSKI There are worse things than being alone, CHARLES BUKOWSKI Boring damned people. All over the earth. Propagating more boring damned people. What a horror show.... CHARLES BUKOWSKI that your power of command with simple language was one of the magnificent things of ... CHARLES BUKOWSKI Cats tell me without effort all that there is to know. CHARLES BUKOWSKI I think that the world should be full of cats and full of rain, that's all, just cats... CHARLES BUKOWSKI My objection to war was not that I had to kill somebody or be killed senselessly, that hardly matter... CHARLES BUKOWSKI My heart is a thousand years old. I am not like other people. CHARLES BUKOWSKI girls please give your bodies and your lives to the young men who CHARLES BUKOWSKI We’ve all heard that little woman who says, “Oh, it’s terrible what these young people do to t... CHARLES BUKOWSKI - I tak nieźle sobie pożyłem. - Co to za życie? – powiedział ojciec.- Nic tylko kłamstw... CHARLES BUKOWSKI I guess I´m too used to sitting in a small room and making words do a few things. I see enoug... CHARLES BUKOWSKI So be careful when you bend over. CHARLES BUKOWSKI as long as there are human beings about there is never going to be any peace for... CHARLES BUKOWSKI I have, he went on, betrayed myself with belief, deluded myself with love tricked myself w... CHARLES BUKOWSKI is there any wonder why the world is where it’s at now? just notice the creature sitting near you ... CHARLES BUKOWSKI they thought that writing had something to do with the politics of the thing. CHARLES BUKOWSKI it’s as if he were hiding in there and I want to console him, say: “I am sorry, poor fellow, but... CHARLES BUKOWSKI it is a fine sunny day and great matters loom across the horizon of history. Carthage in my rearview... CHARLES BUKOWSKI I often carry things to read so that I will not have to look at the people. CHARLES BUKOWSKI another hot summer night as I sit here and play at being a writer again. and the worst thing of cour... CHARLES BUKOWSKI Living too long takes more than time CHARLES BUKOWSKI humanity you sick motherfucker. CHARLES BUKOWSKI I look like a man in a death camp. I am. still, I'm lucky: I feat on solitude, ... CHARLES BUKOWSKI Writing is its own intoxication. CHARLES BUKOWSKI if I had a book or a drink then I didn’t think too much of other things—fools create their own p... CHARLES BUKOWSKI But you know, my former life as a bibliophile, it possibly kept me from murdering somebody, myself i... CHARLES BUKOWSKI alone tonight in this house, alone with 6 cats who tell me without effort all that there is to know. CHARLES BUKOWSKI a bird no one wants. he’s mine. my bird of pain. he doesn’t sing. that bird swaying on the bough... CHARLES BUKOWSKI of one hundred movies there's one that is fair, one that's good and ninety eight that are very bad. ... CHARLES BUKOWSKI people are worn away with striving, they hide in common habits. their concerns are herd concerns. fe... CHARLES BUKOWSKI death is walking up and down this room smoking my cigars taking hits of my <... CHARLES BUKOWSKI there was a soldier in the next room living with his wife and he would soon be going over there to p... CHARLES BUKOWSKI I was so thin I could slice bread with my shoulderblades, only I seldom had bread CHARLES BUKOWSKI well, death says, as he walks by, I'm going to get you anyhow no matter what you've been: writer, ca... CHARLES BUKOWSKI not writing is not good but trying to write when you can't is worse. CHARLES BUKOWSKI great books are the ones we need CHARLES BUKOWSKI young or old, good or bad, I don't think anything dies as slow and as hard as a writer. CHARLES BUKOWSKI I could read the great books but the great books don't interest me. CHARLES BUKOWSKI writing about a writer's block is better than not writing at all CHARLES BUKOWSKI I tell you such fine music waits in the shadows of hell. CHARLES BUKOWSKI I often carry things to read so that I will not have to look at the people. CHARLES BUKOWSKI Now we are citizens of nothing. the sun itself knows the sad truth of how we surrendered our lives a... CHARLES BUKOWSKI I was sentimental about many things: a woman’s shoes under the bed; one hairpin left behind on the... CHARLES BUKOWSKI