Charles Bukowski Quotes

Find what you love and let it kill you.

There's no way I can stop writing, it's a form of insanity.

I loved you like a man loves a woman he never touches, only writes to, keeps little photographs of.

some moments are nice, some are
nicer, some are even worth
writing
about.

She's mad, but she's magic. There's no lie in her fire.

Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.

Sometimes you just have to pee in the sink.

Life's as kind as you let it be.

When I begin to doubt my ability to work the word, I simply read another writer and know I have nothing to worry about. My contest is only with myself, to do it right, with power, and force, and delight, and gamble.

girls
please give your
bodies and your
lives
to
the young men
who
deserve them

besides
there is
no way
I would welcome
the
intolerable
dull
senseless hell
you would bring
me

and
I wish you
luck
in bed
and
out

but not
in
mine

than

great writers are indecent people
they live unfairly
saving the best part for paper.

good human beings save the world
so that bastards like me can keep creating art,
become immortal.
if you read this after I am dead
it means I made it.

the writing of some
men
is like a vast bridge
that carries you
over
the many things
that claw and tear.

The Wine of Forever

unless the sun inside you is burning your gut, don't do it

nothing can save
you
except
writing.
it keeps the walls
from
failing.

writing about a writer's block is better than not writing at all

There is only one place to write and that is alone at a typewriter. The writer who has to go into the streets is a writer who does not know the streets. . . when you leave your typewriter you leave your machine gun and the rats come pouring through.

if you think they didn't go crazy
in tiny rooms just like you're doing now without women without food without hope then you're not ready.

not writing is not good but trying to write when you can't is worse.

Most people are much better at saying things in letters than in conversation, and some people can write artistic, inventive letters, but when they try a poem or story or novel they become pretentious.

When I was young I was depressed all the time. But suicide no longer seemed a possibility in my life. At my age there was very little left to kill. It was good to be old, no matter what they said. It was reasonable that a man had to be at least 50 years old before he could write with anything like clarity.