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

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Having a bunch of cats around is good. If you're feeling bad, you just look at the cats, you'...
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the way to create art is to burn and destroy
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Can you remember who you were, before the world told you who you should be?
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Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.
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Understand me. I’m not like an ordinary world. I have my madness, I live in another dimension and ...
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Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I'm not going to make it, but you laugh...
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Do you hate people?”

“I don't hate them...I just feel better when they're not around.
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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
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There's nothing like privacy. You know, I like people. It's nice that they might like my books and a...
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For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't ...
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being alone never felt right. sometimes it felt good, but it never felt right.
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I've never been lonely. I've been in a room -- I've felt suicidal. I've been depressed. I've felt aw...
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Sex is kicking death in the ass while singing.
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The shortest distance between two points is often unbearable.
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I wish to weep
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I loved you like a man loves a woman he never touches, only writes to, keeps little photographs of.
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Find what you love and let it kill you.
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My dear,
Find what you love and let it kill you.
Let it drain you of your all. Let it clin...
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That is what friendship means. Sharing the prejudice of experience.
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For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't ...
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You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politic...
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Never get out of bed before noon
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I can relax with bums because I am a bum. I don't like laws, morals, religions, rules. I don'...
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Writers have to put up with this editor thing; it is ageless and eternal and wrong.
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The more cats you have, the longer you live. If you have a hundred cats, you'll live 10 times lo...
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Somebody once asked me what my theory of life was, and I said, 'Don't try.' That fits th...
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Genius might be the ability to say a profound thing in a simple way.
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When everything works best, it's not because you chose writing but because writing chose you. It...
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when we were kids
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we often talked CHARLES BUKOWSKI
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we
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What is your advice to young writers?”
“Drink, fuck and smoke plenty of cigarettes.
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News travels fast in places where nothing much ever happens.
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The Genius Of The Crowd

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What my character is or how many jails I have lounged in, or wards or walls or wassails, how many lo...
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you boys can keep your virgins
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Humanity, you never had it to begin with.
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A i urreni njerëzit?
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it doesn't matter if Prince Charles falls off his horse
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there is a place in the heart that
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a space

and even ...
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las palabras bonitas
como las mujeres bonitas
se arrugan y mueren.
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I went to the kitchen and felt-up the turkey.
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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