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"Well it's good to have a car like that, once in a while somebody'll say, 'why don't you come over for dinner?' and I can just say, 'Car won't make it.' I don't have to tell them that time is scarcer than young pussy around here, and I don't mean time to write POETRY. I mean time to lay in bed, alone, and stare up at the ceiling and not think at all, not at all, not at all."
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"For me poetry is an evasion of the real job of writing prose."
"A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness."
"At eight, he had once told his mother that he wanted to paint air."
"My brain has become my enemy. We fight over creation and his need for sleep."
"I do not attachany exaggerated importance to my poetical works. Life isthere to be lived rather than to be written about. My aimis to search out the manifold experience that it offers,wringing from each moment what of emotion it presents.I look upon my writing as a graceful accomplishmentwhich does not absorb but rather adds pleasure toexistence. And as for posterity-damn posterity."
"I have spent a good many years since-too many, I think-being ashamed about what I write. I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction or poetry who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God-given talent. If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that's all."
"He kept seeing the brains dribbling down the wallpaper. It wasn't the killing that stayed on his mind, it was the spilled talent. A lifetime of honing and shaping torn apart in less than a second. All those stories, all those images, and what came out looked like so much oatmeal. What was the point?"
"When you aren't satisfied with what has already been done, make something better. That is the greatest responsibility and the true freedom of creativity. The freedom is in that it doesn't need to complain."
"Fresh, solid ideas feel like gifts to writers, therefore every morning is Christmas."
"We write to shed our sorrows and give strength to our spirit."
Explore more quotes by Charles Bukowski
"I guess lesbianism wasn't so rampant in those days, they would've gotten a bunk with each other and just left me alone, you know. Which would have been just as well, you know.."
"It was a joy! Words weren't dull, words were things that could make your mind hum. If you read them and let yourself feel the magic, you could live without pain, with hope, no matter what happened to you."
"If it doesn't come bursting out of youin spite of everything,don't do it.unless it comes unasked out of yourheart and your mind and your mouthand your gut,don't do it."
"If I never see you again I will always carry youinsideoutsideon my fingertipsand at brain edgesand in centerscentersof what I am ofwhat remains."
"Potential," I said, "doesn't mean a thing. You've got to do it. Almost every baby in a crib has more potential than I have."
"I went to the worst of bars hoping to get killed but all I could do was to get drunk again."
"She slammed the door andwas gone.I looked at the closed doorand at the doorknoband strangelyI didn't feelalone."
"People need me. I fill them. If they can't see me for a while they get desperate, they get sick. But if I see them too often I get sick. It's hard to feed without getting fed."
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