Charles Bukowski On Writing

 

What interests me is non-dullness.

There’s music in everything, even defeat.

(Paraphrased) Some poets can’t stand the smell of life.

I could and can get more knowledge of life by talking to a garbage man than I could talking to T.S. Eliot.

I am a dangerous man when turned loose at a typewriter.

The only thing intelligent about a good art is if it shakes you alive.

This writing the poem often brings strange ladies to the door, knocking…

Those who have been writing literature have not been writing life.

I wrote short machine-gun style chapters in hope of giving verve and pace.

Very successful writers are like presidents: they get the vote because the madding crowd recognizes something in them.

There aren’t any rules (for writing).

When you’re hanging out with writers you’re not hearing or seeing anything but that.

Poetry can be entertaining, it can be written with astonishing clarity.

Writing is only the result of what we have become day by day over the years.

The only writers who write well are those who must write in order to not go mad.

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