Charles Bukowski Quotes

Reading is probably what leads most writers to writing.

In 25 years of writing novels, I've never had anything that felt like writer's block.

A writer who isn't writing is asking for trouble.

I've been writing for as long as I can remember, and reading even before that. My mom still has stories that I wrote when I was in kindergarten. I was a reader and a re-reader. That's the main reason I became a writer.

I suppose all writers worry about the well running dry.

I've always loved short stories. Even before I was a writer, I was reading short stories - there were certain writers where I just felt like they could do in a short story what so many writers needed a whole novel to do, and that was really inspiring to me.

My new novel 'Red Hook Road' began many years ago as a short article in the newspaper.

There are so many stories to be told, by so many good writers.

I'm constantly creating and writing.

For me, reading books and writing them are tied together. The words of other writers teach me and refresh me and inspire me.

Becoming the reader is the essence of becoming a writer.

Each book starts from ashes really. I don't feel that I have this to say or that to say or this story to tell or that story to tell, but I want to be occupied with the writing process while I'm living.

A book comes and says, 'Write me.

I can still remember the miraculous feeling of writing a sentence, then more sentences, telling a story. The first thing I wrote was a one-page summary of Robinson Crusoe and I am so sorry I do not have it any more; it was at that moment I became an author.

I'm a writer and writers either have good memories or nothing at all.

I don't have a name and I don't have a plot. I have the typewriter and I have white paper and I have me, and that should add up to a novel.

Readers would email me and say, 'Please write a novel about so-and-so,' but it has to come from yourself and not so much from your readership.

People do write books.

For me, it would be pointless to write a novel that I knew I could complete within a specific length of time. I could do that only by repeating something I had done before, and I've never wanted to do that.

Everyone has early fiction fantasies, but it wasn't until my second child Betsy was born that I allowed the urge to write a novel bubble up.

I always love writing about children.

As a writer, you need a strong sense of self-belief. And when it comes to writing, I've always had that.

When I was about eight, I realised the person whose name was on the book got money for it, and it seemed almost too good to be true that you could get paid for making things up.

I got into writing because books and stories were always a big part of my life. I loved listening to them and then reading them, and I loved making them up.

I love movies. Movies have influenced me as a writer.