Charles Bukowski Quotes
My writing is jagged and harsh, I want it to remain that way; I don't want it smoothed out.
Quotes to Explore
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I've been writing a lot of poetry recently. It helps me think and work things out.
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All autobiography is storytelling; all writing is autobiography.
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Writing songs is an essential part of my life: my mother teaches piano, and I have inherited my grandparents' passion for music, especially from my grandfather Tommy, who was a great drummer. It's no coincidence that I play the drums best, but I am also good with the guitar and the piano.
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Writing 'William Shakespeare's Star Wars' was a fun exercise in mixing just the right amount of the Bard with just the right amount of everyone's favorite galaxy far, far away.
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Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.
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All writing is that structure of revelation. There's something you want to find out. If you know everything up front in the beginning, you really don't need to read further if there's nothing else to find out.
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If at noon you sit down and there's just silence or blank tape, in an hour if you have a song, that didn't exist an hour ago. Now it exists and it might exist for a long time. There's something empowering about that.
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Writing books is a nice retreat. There's nothing quite like diving into a book for a few hours. That is a big time vacation.
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I don't talk about Amy Winehouse as a 'singer.' She's a pioneer. I listened to her endlessly when I started writing.
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I love writing songs.
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Normally, most writers don't say, 'I'm going into a mild hypnotic trance.' Typically, they don't know how they do it. Most people, when they have a good experience writing, they're well placed in that state, which is also sometimes called a 'flow state.' If you don't have trouble, you don't have to think about it.
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Hard writing makes easy reading.
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I love writing. Given a choice, after directing for all these years, and if given an army of talented directors, I would not direct at all.
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Good acting is all in the writing. If it isn't on the page, then it really won't make any difference. You cannot act on force of personality alone.
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I don't have specific music for when I'm writing. I'm usually listening to the same playlist or 'artist' before I arrive at the computer as when I'm walking somewhere after leaving the computer.
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The ego being shattered is not what frightens me - that can be useful for writing - but the ego being inflated is sort of like it dying of gout.
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When you're writing, you are robbed of your delivery.
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I don't think I'd ever make an album of just covers because I love writing my own music.
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Despite having written five books, I worry that I have not written the right kinds of books, or that perhaps I have dedicated too much of my life to writing, and have therefore neglected other aspects of my being.
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To be honest, I have never thought about getting into direction.
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When you give up a bit of work don't (unless it is hopelessly bad) throw it away. Put it in a drawer. It may come in useful later. Much of my best work, or what I think my best, is the re-writing of things begun and abandoned years earlier.
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Here's some bumper stickers I'd like to see:
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My writing is jagged and harsh, I want it to remain that way; I don't want it smoothed out.
