Charles Bukowski Quotes

The essence of style is a simple way of saying something complex.

An artist is a man who says a difficult thing in a simple way

It is far more difficult to be simple than to be complicated.

I admire writers who can make complicated things simple, but my own talent has been to make simple things complicated.

There is a world of communication which is not dependent on words. This is the world in which the artist operates and for him words can be dangerous unless they are examined in the light of the work. The communication is in the work and words are no substitute for this.

My natural tendency is to complicate everything--and then to spray words and ideas onto everything afterwards. I've had to develop the habit of keeping things simple.

When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.

What is grand is necessarily obscure to weak men. That which can be made explicit to the idiot is not worth my care.

I'm a huge believer in clarity.

If somebody writes clearly, you can pretty much tell immediately if something is shallow or deep, whereas if they write with all this duckweed on the surface, you can't tell if the stream is one inch deep or a hundred fathoms.

In labouring to be concise, I become obscure.

I never want to dumb it down. If there's any simplification, it's just a simplification to make sure that the reader understands the point that the character is trying to make.

It is when I struggle to be brief that I become obscure.

An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.

As an artist, you want to entertain people.

I think art is communication. To that extent, it can be the words between the words. It has a possibility of communicating something more than people can do with prose or just talking.

I'd rather not ever make anything overly simple just because I'm scared people won't get it.

Simplicity before understanding is simplistic; simplicity after understanding is simple.

What is style? For many people, a very complicated way of saying very simple things. According to us, a very simple way of saying very complicated things.

Reduction! One wants to say more than nature and one makes the impossible mistake of wanting to say it with more means than she, instead of fewer.

Jesus made everything so simple and we have made it so complicated. He spoke to the people in short sentences and everyday words, illustrating His messages with never-to-be forgotten stories.

Clarity is the most important thing to me - in thinking - and so I try in the books to be as clear as possible.

Oh child, your language is so utterly simple and limited that it has the affect of extreme complication. -Aunt Beast

I don't believe that you can possibly separate expression from thought in an imaginative work. The better a thing is expressed, the more completely it is thought.

Art is the queen of all sciences communicating knowledge to all the generations of the world.