Charles Bukowski Quotes

The exact day I became a poet was April 1, 1965, the day I bought my first typewriter.

One thing I always did in my career was writing. I always was writing. I was trying to create things. For myself, for other people.

To be a novelist, all I need is a pen and a piece of paper.

I write from my imagination, not from what I've read in books or seen on TV or to make money. I wrote from an idea I was passionate about.

I'm addicted to creating and writing.

I don't have any office; I can write everywhere. So, I put a piece of paper on the table, and then I travel. Literally, writing for me is like travelling. It's getting out of myself and living another life - maybe a better life.

I'm constantly creating and writing.

Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.

Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink. Drink and be filled up.

I don't need music to write, but sometimes I put music on. I don't need special clothes or even my own equipment.

There is no lighter burden, nor more agreeable, than a pen.

Readers would email me and say, 'Please write a novel about so-and-so,' but it has to come from yourself and not so much from your readership.

I think that you certainly don't have to be aged and travel the world to write a poem.

Don't think it, ink it.

I pecked my stories out two-fingered on the Remington portable typewriter my mother had bought me. I had begged for it when I was ten.

Art is the daughter of freedom.

When you're writing fiction or poetry... it really comes down to this: indifference to everything except what you're doing... A young writer could do worse than follow the advice given in those lines.

Part of my job as Children's Laureate is to visit schools and talk about my love of books and stories and encourage them all to do it as well - to read, to write, to never be afraid of their own voice. Because we all have something to say.

Let me read you some of my poetry. My poetry just takes me to another level.

And the idea of just wandering off to a cafe with a notebook and writing and seeing where that takes me for awhile is just bliss.

When I try to write I try to write something different every time. That's the challenge.

We all write poems; it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words.

It all has to do with art - writing, painting, things I've done for a long time but just never had enough time to pursue. I have poetry - things that are designed for songs, but they're always poems first.

Art, it seems to me, doesn't need freedom so much as it needs courage and love - some would call it 'soul' or 'Eros.'

My aunt got me interested in journalism - she found an old typewriter, had it worked over, put it on the dining room table, gave me a stack of paper and said, 'Play like you're a writer.'