Charles Bukowski Quotes

Love is poison. A sweet poison, yes, but it will kill you all the same.

The tent in which she first met him had smelled of blood, of the death she did not understand, and still she had thought of it all as a game. She had promised him the world. His flesh in the flesh of his enemies. And much too late had she realized what he had sown in her. Love. Worst of all poisons.

To caress the serpent that devours us, until it has eaten away our heart.

Art, as I see it, is any human activity which doesn’t grow out of either of our species’ two basic instincts: survival and reproduction.

Art is far feebler than necessity.

Iwas a sculptor.Butthat'sreallydrawinga drawing you fall over in the dark, a three-dimensional drawing.

Pure drawing is an abstraction.

Every great artist must begin by learning to draw with the single line, and my advice to young animators is to learn how to live with that razor-sharp instrument or art. An artist who comes to me with eight or ten good drawings of the human figure in simple lines has a good chance of being hired. But I will tell the artist who comes with a bunch of drawings of Bugs Bunny to go back and learn how to draw the human body. An artist who knows that can learn how to draw ANYTHING, including Bugs Bunny.

We talk too much. We should talk less and draw more.

Once I was lost in a forest. I was so afraid. My blood pounded in my chest and I knew my heart's strength would soon be exhausted. I saved myself without thinking. I grasped the two syllables closest to me, and replaced my heartbeat with your name.

She stays in the same spot, anchored by the profound, desperate loneliness of a bad relationship.

We were like confirmed opium-eaters: in our moments of reason we well knew the deadly nature of our pursuit, but we certainly were not prepared to abandon its terrible delights.

Art for me is like breathing. When I stop breathing, what happens?

Rabbits live close to death and when death comes closer than usual, thinking about survival leaves little room for anything else.

Thou art a boil, a plague sore, an embossed carbuncle in my corrupted blood.

Wolves go after a wounded deer, it is the nature of the beast.

Let whoever may have attained to so much as to have the power of drawing know that he holds a great treasure.

Unarmed hand-to-hand fighting does not change through the ages; only the name changes, and it has only one rule: do it first, do it fast, do it dirtiest.

The art of drawing which is of more real importance to the human race than that of writing...should be taught to every child just as writing is.

Nature taking its course - hunter and prey, the endless circle of life and death.

I didn't know that being in a relationship meant you had to be nice. I thought it meant you had to hack away at the other person until they were beaten down and then were too afraid to leave.

Young artists must pave their way to Art by drawing pictures for magazine stories that young authors write to pave their way to Literature.

I never talk when I'm drawing a person, especially if I'm making line drawings. I prefer there to be no noise at all so I can concentrate more.

Science needs the intuition and metaphorical power of the arts, and the arts need the fresh blood of science ... Interpretation is the logical channel of consilient explanation between science and the arts. The arts ... also nourish our craving for the mystical.

Line is the most powerful device of drawing.