Charles Bukowski Quotes

Art lifts man from his personal life into the universal life.

I don't see art as entertainment.

Art in relation to life is nothing more than a glove turned inside out. It seems to have the same shapes and contours, but it can never be used for the same purpose. Art teaches nothing about life, just as life teaches us nothing about art.

The delight we find in art amounts to recognition of a saving grace, to an acknowledgment that the problem of life has a solution implicit in its own nature, though not yet formulated by the intellect.

Art is not consciousness per se, but rather its antidote- evolved from within consciousness itself.

What would life be without art? Science prolongs life. To consist of what-eating, drinking, and sleeping? What is the good of living longer if it is only a matter of satisfying the requirements that sustain life? All this is nothing without the charm of art.

Art is the means we have of undoing the damage of haste. It's what everything else isn't.

The purpose of art is always, ultimately, to give pleasure - though our sensibilities may take time to catch up with the forms of pleasure that art in a given time may offer.

a work that intends to be art must first be entertaining.

To love something as an artist ... means to be shaken not by its ultimate value or lack of value, but by a side of it that suddenly opens up. Where art has value it shows things that few have seen. It's conquering, not pacifying.

If art is not to be life-enhancing, what is it to be?

Music, of all the arts, stands in a special region, unlit by any star but its own, and utterly without meaning ... except its own.

The purpose of all art is to cause a deep and emotion, also one that is entertaining or pleasing. Out of the depth and entertainment comes value.

The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art.

I like the fact that music is more abstract.

Art is much less important than life, but what a poor life without it.

In the finest critics one hears the full cry of the human. They tell one why it matters to read.

The claims I'm making for art are simply the claims that we naturally make around music or around poetry. We're much more relaxed around those art forms. We're willing to ask, 'How could this find a place in my heart?'

I think it was Roger Fry who first coined what he took to be a final definition of a work of art, whether it was a painting, building, poem or Hepplewhite chair. He said that the best works of art are finished products that preserve 'a valuable state of mind'.

Science explains the world, but only Art can reconcile us to it.

The purpose of poetry is to make life complete in itself.

I still hope that more people can create art, even though artistic genres may never be the most popular or money-making genres. But the thing is, I think art is more long-lasting. It stays in people, and it changes them.

The poem, the song, the picture, is only water drawn from the well of the people, and it should be given back to them in a cup of beauty so that they may drink - and in drinking understand themselves.

Art is about the dynamics of the human experience.

A poem should not mean but be.