Charles Bukowski Quotes

Melville locked himself away in his room for months while working on 'Moby Dick.' If I ever decide to write a novel, I hope someone will take pity on me and take me out to dinner instead.

Every writer I know has trouble writing.

I've always said the hardest aspect of the job of being a writer is writing.

Any writer who says he loves writing is crazy. Or lying.

I feel satisfaction at the end of the day when I've written a scene that I really like or when I write a good line of dialogue that I read out to my wife or something like that. But there's also days where it's just bloody agony and I go, 'ugh, this is such crap! Why did I think I had any talent?

Writing is agony for me. I work at it eight hours every day, hoping to get six pages, but I am satisfied with three.

Lyrics are so important, I hate every second of writing them, but it's something I take great pride in when it's finished.

I hear so many writers say - and these are writers that I trust completely - 'I just started hearing a voice', or, 'The characters came to life'. I am filled with loathing for my own characters when I hear that because they do nothing of the sort. Left to their own devices, they do nothing but drink coffee and complain about their lives.

With writing, I need a lot of time to sit around and do nothing. But now that I have kids, I just don't have that luxury. I have a babysitter for three hours a day, which is how long I have to write.

Maybe I can't write without painting myself into a corner first.

When you are a writer, the assist-to-turnover ratio... there are a lot more turnovers than assists.

I have always found writing pleasant and don't understand what people mean by 'throes of creation.'

Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness, but I doubt if they improve his writing.... For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.

I'm doing one of three things: I'm writing. I'm staring out the window. Or I'm writhing on the floor.

I do not so much write a book as sit up with it, as a dying friend. I hold its hand and hope it will get better.

All good writing is built one good line at a time. You build a novel the same way you do a pyramid. One word, one stone at a time, underneath a full moon while the fingers bleed.

I find it painful when I'm without anything. But I work in multiple fields. If I can't write, I find myself taking photographs. I can go on the road and perform. But the most important thing for me is writing, and when I hit those walls, it's painful.

Writing is supposed to be difficult, agonizing, a dreadful exercise, a terrible occupation.

Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. I'm always irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it's very shocking to the system.

I write so slowly, I could write with my own blood and not hurt myself.

I don't think I'd ever write anything that I don't also direct just because it's so hard and painful to write as it is.

I think most writers can't really think about their work without a kind of revulsion. And I think that's probably why we keep going back and trying again, trying to do better each time.

I don't think I'll write a large novel again because it was like being in jail for me. Even though that's the funniest book I've ever written, it was the saddest period of my life.

A writer never has a vacation. For a writer, life consists of either writing or thinking about writing.

I think that gulf is what makes the work interesting, but as a creator it's endlessly frustrating because I'm starting out with this goal, this thing I'm trying to create, and then the thing I actually do create is very, very different. It's always painful, in some ways, especially when it's just finished.