Charles Bukowski Quotes

Writing isn't a job so much as a compulsion. I've been writing since I was very young because for some strange reason, I must write, and also because when I write, I feel more alive and closer to the world than when I'm not writing.

The trade of authorship is a violent, and indestructible obsession.

Writing has always felt like a compulsion. Even at high school there'd be times when people would ask me if I wanted to go and hang out and I'd sit home and write instead.

All stories I write are compulsive. Anything I've ever written was because I don't have a choice. I write stories because I can't wait to tell it, I can't wait to see how it ends.

I am a compulsive writer.

I'm obsessive when I get an idea in my head.

I was obsessed. I wouldn't quit. My grades suffered. I didn't care.

The inspiration to write? Perhaps it's not so much inspiration, as a NEED to write. I get itchy and guilty and dissatisfied when I haven't written for a while. Ideas come to me and need to be written down.

Obsession led me to write. It's been that way with every book I've ever written. I become completely consumed by a theme, by characters, by a desire to meet a challenge.

A lot of people thought this dream must be madness, but we are not crazy.

If I went for too long without writing, I would start to feel like something inside me was dying.

I make music and I can't stop. It's a compulsion and an obsession and a curse.

I'm like a junkie for writing.

When something possesses me, I go ahead and do it.

Writing is like a 'lust,' or like 'scratching when you itch.' Writing comes as a result of a very strong impulse, and when it does come, I, for one, must get it out.

More than anything, that's been the thread through my life - the desire to write, the impulse to write. I mean, it's taken me other places, but it was the impulse to write that led me to singing.

The books I like to read the most feel like they've been written by somebody who had to write them or go crazy. They had to get them out of their heads. I like that kind of urgency.

Writers are just like other people, except slightly more obsessed.

I have been writing since I was old enough to spell. I have never considered not writing.

The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself.

I'd pretty much given up hope of being published, so I just wrote the book I wanted to read.

I've been to a lot of places and done a lot of things, but writing was always first. It's a kind of pain I can't do without.

Being a writer was never a choice, it was an irresistible compulsion.

Sometimes I've called writing a disease. If so, I'm glad that it caught me.

Once I started to write, it was like all the lights came on. I was always making up stories in my head. I was a daydreamer. I didn't start as a child, but once I started, I couldn't stop. It was compulsive.