Poetry Quotes by Charles Bukowski

Poetry is what happens when nothing else can.

— Charles Bukowski

“I run with the hunted.”

— Charles Bukowski

“crawled like a blind slug into the web”

— Charles Bukowski

“we must bring our own light to the darkness.”

— Charles Bukowski

“I wait on my fix: I am a poetry junkie.”

— Charles Bukowski

“the gods seldom give but so quickly take.”

— Charles Bukowski

“sometimes it's hard to know what to do.”

— Charles Bukowski

I'm only interested in poetry.

— Charles Bukowski

“it does seem the more we drink the better the words go.”

— Charles Bukowski

I am aware that a computer can’t create a poem, but neither can a typewriter.

— Charles Bukowski

I'm very clever at hiding poems perhaps more clever than I am at writing them.

— Charles Bukowski

“the price of creation is never too high. the price of living with other people always is.”

— Charles Bukowski

one can never be sure whether it's good poetry or bad acid

— Charles Bukowski

How are his poems?" "He's not as good as he thinks he is, but then most of us feel that way.

— Charles Bukowski

“regret is mostly caused by not having done anything.”

— Charles Bukowski

“it's so easy to be a poet and so hard to be a man.”

— Charles Bukowski

but as God said, crossing his legs, I see where I have made plenty of poets but not so very much poetry.

— Charles Bukowski

Bad luck for the young poet would be a rich father, an early marriage, an early success or the ability to do…

— Charles Bukowski

To me Art (poetry) is a continuous and continuing process and that when a man fails to write good poetry he fails…

— Charles Bukowski

Art is its own excuse, and it's either Art or it's something else. It's either a poem or a piece of cheese.

— Charles Bukowski

“sometimes all we need to be able to continue alone are the dead rattling the walls that close us in.”

— Charles Bukowski

“I paid, got up, walked to the door, opened it. I heard the man say, "that guy's nuts." out on the street…

— Charles Bukowski

“the best poems it seems to me are written out of an ultimate need. and once the poem is written, the only…

— Charles Bukowski

“the world is better without them. only the plants and the animals are true comrades. I drink to them and with them.”

— Charles Bukowski

“the best part was pulling down the shades stuffing the doorbell with rags putting the phone in the refrigerator and going to…

— Charles Bukowski

“we are burning like a chicken wing left on the grill of an outdoor barbecue we are unwanted and burning we are…

— Charles Bukowski

“meanwhile I look at young girls stems flowers of chance. there must be a way. surely there must be a way that…

— Charles Bukowski

“this then will be my destiny: scrabbling for pennies in dark tiny halls reading poems I have long since become tired of.…

— Charles Bukowski

“just waiting is the worst. nothing worse than waiting just waiting. always hated to wait. what’s there about waiting that’s so intolerable?…

— Charles Bukowski

“They're waiting for you to say all these grand statements, you know? You march across the room and you're supposed to say…

— Charles Bukowski

Most people are much better at saying things in letters than in conversation, and some people can write artistic, inventive letters, but…

— Charles Bukowski

“as long as there are human beings about there is never going to be any peace for any individual upon this earth…

— Charles Bukowski

“The place trembled with sound. I didn't need to do anything. They would do it all. But you had to be careful.…

— Charles Bukowski

I should think that many of our poets, the honest ones, will confess to having no manifesto. It is a painful confession…

— Charles Bukowski

“poetry readings have to be some of the saddest damned things ever, the gathering of the clansmen and clanladies, week after week,…

— Charles Bukowski

“Yes, I know what you mean about writing and writers. We seem to have lost the target. Writers seem to write to…

— Charles Bukowski

“darkness falls upon Humanity and faces become terrible things that wanted more than there was. all our days are marked with unexpected…

— Charles Bukowski

“And when you write a poem within the accepted poem-form, making it sound like a poem because a poem is a poem…

— Charles Bukowski

“I know a woman who keeps buying puzzles chinese puzzles blocks wires pieces that finally fit into some order. she works it…

— Charles Bukowski

“the problem that I’ve found with most poets that I have known is that they’ve never had an 8 hour job and…

— Charles Bukowski