1,615 Quotes by Charles Bukowski

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

people need me. I fillthem. if they can't see mefor awhile the get desperate, they getsick.but if I see them too oftenI get sick. it's hard to feedwithout getting fed.

If I bet on humanity, I'd never cash a ticket.

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.

...still, I’m lucky: I feast on solitude, I will never miss the crowd. I could read the great books but the great books don’t interest me. I sit in bed and wait for the whole thing to go one way or the other. just like everybody else.

Basically, that's why I wrote: to save my ass, to save my ass from the madhouse, from the streets, from myself.

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.

take a writer away from his typewriterand all you have leftisthe sicknesswhich started himtypingin thebeginning