Writing Quotes by Charles Bukowski

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

— Charles Bukowski

“You’ll never be a writer if you hide from reality.”

— Charles Bukowski

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

— Charles Bukowski

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

— Charles Bukowski

writers are desperate people and when they stop being desperate they stop being writers.

— Charles Bukowski

There was nothing glorious about the life of a drinker or the life of a writer.

— Charles Bukowski

The writer has no responsibility other than to jack off in bed alone and write a good page.

— Charles Bukowski

“while most people converse it all away I write it down.”

— 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

People just don't know how to write down a simple easy line. It's difficult for them; it's like trying to keep a…

— Charles Bukowski

Your writing", she said to me, "it's so raw. It's like a sledgehammer, and yet it has humor and tenderness. . . .

— Charles Bukowski

take a writer away from his typewriter and all you have left is the sickness which started him typing in the beginning

— Charles Bukowski

The worst thing for a writer is to know another writer, and worse than that, to know a number of other writers.…

— Charles Bukowski

I seldom know what I'm going to write when I sit down. There isn't much agony and sweat of the human spirit…

— Charles Bukowski

I never write in the daytime. It's like running through the shopping mall with your clothes off. Everybody can see you. At…

— Charles Bukowski

“A writer is not a writer because he has written some books. A writer is not a writer because he teaches literature.…

— 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

“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

I write right off the typer. I call it my "machinegun." I hit it hard, usually late at night while drinking wine…

— Charles Bukowski

I don't carry notebooks and I don't consciously store ideas. I try not to think that I am a writer and I…

— Charles Bukowski

“I disliked them all immediately, sitting around acting clever and superior. They nullified each other. The worst thing for a writer is…

— Charles Bukowski

And if there is anybody out there who is crazy enough to want to become a writer, I'd say go ahead, spit…

— Charles Bukowski

“another hot summer night as I sit here and play at being a writer again. and the worst thing of course is…

— Charles Bukowski

When I was young I was depressed all the time. But suicide no longer seemed a possibility in my life. At my…

— Charles Bukowski

There were always men looking for jobs in America. There were always all these usable bodies. And I wanted to be a…

— Charles Bukowski

I remembered my New Orleans days, living on two five-cent candy bars a day for weeks at a time in order to…

— Charles Bukowski

“Writing was never work for me. It had been the same for as long as I could remember: turn on the radio…

— Charles Bukowski

There's nothing to stop a man from writing unless that man stops himself. If a man truly desires to write, then he…

— Charles Bukowski

“The morning interviews were always the hardest, hung-over, trying to get the beer down. No, I have no idea why I am…

— Charles Bukowski

“It was wintertime. I was starving to death trying to be a writer in New York. I hadn't eaten for three or…

— Charles Bukowski

Yes?’ he asked, looking at me over the sheet. ‘I’m a writer temporarily down on my inspirations.’ ‘Oh, a writer, eh?’ ‘Yes.’…

— Charles Bukowski

Writing is something that you don't know how to do. You sit down and it's something that happens, or it may not…

— 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

“There is a problem with writers. If what a writer wrote was published and sold many, many copies, the writer thought he…

— Charles Bukowski

“So you want to be a writer if it doesn’t come bursting out of you in spite of everything, don’t do it.…

— Charles Bukowski

If I stop writing I am dead. And that's the only way I'll stop: dead.

— Charles Bukowski

Writers are nothing but beggars with a good line.

— Charles Bukowski

“Hey baby, when I write, I'm the hero of my shit.”

— Charles Bukowski

Don't ever write a novel unless it hurts like a hot turd coming out.

— Charles Bukowski

The secret is writing down one simple line after another.

— Charles Bukowski