Charles Bukowski Quotes

I write to save someone's life, probably my own

I write in order to make the little voices in my head go away. Thus far it hasn't worked.

I've often said to myself, "Thank God I can write, 'cause this is hilarious." I actually wanted to go into all that more in the book, but my editor thought it was too crazy.

I write to give myself strength. I write to be the characters that I am not. I write to explore all the things I'm afraid of.

Writing becomes a really good creative outlet when you're sitting there and feeling creatively frustrated or stilted, but also you then get to write parts for yourself.

I've always expressed myself best through writing. I've gotten out all of my deepest feelings that way for as long as I can remember.

I feel like if writers used writing as therapy we'd have a ton of happy writers.

When I have worries, fears or a love affair, I have the luck of being able to transform it into a poem.

There's no better way to process pain than to write.

I also started writing songs because I had this burning activity in my heart and had to express myself.

Writing for me is definitely a form of ventilation - a way for me to cope and deal with emotions. I think it is for any writer.

If I don't write to empty my mind, I go mad.

As a youngster when I started writing and stuff, I did actually write more from other people's perspectives. When I hit 18 and something happened to me that hurt me, I discovered that writing the truth is really therapeutic and amazing. Every single one of my songs is about something very personal to me and I could tell anyone what it's about, each song. Like a diary, basically.

I try to work every day because you have no refuge but writing. When you're going through a period of unhappiness, a broken love affair, the death of someone you love, or some other disorder in your life, then you have no refuge but writing.

I write and that way rid myself of me and then at last I can rest.

Writing is not my problem, it is my solution.

I do these records. All of these ideas that I have, that I put out there, that inspire me to write, are a purging in a lot of ways. I have to expel them in order for myself to walk around and actually smile and be a regular, or a living, person.

The mind can be trained to relieve itself on paper.

I don't really write for fun; it's not an enjoyable experience. For me, art, or whatever the hell it is I do, has always been a refuge from that which makes me want to tear my lungs out. That's why I play like I play; I'm not into entertainment.

Sometimes my feelings are so hot that I have to take the pen and put them out on paper to keep them from setting me afire inside; then all that ink and labor are wasted because I can't print the results

One of the things that draws writers to writing is that they can get things right that they got wrong in real life by writing about them.

Being able to write becomes a kind of shield, a way of hiding, a way of too instantly transforming pain into honey.

At the age of fourteen I discovered writing as an escape from a world of reality in which I felt acutely uncomfortable.

I am not really a writer. I am just someone who is haunted, and I will write the hauntings down.

Writing has... been to me like a bath from which I have risen feeling cleaner, healthier, and freer.