"I feel that I am too old to be destroyed - creatively - it's ingrained like death, no shaking it off."

"great Art is pure ranting in a golden cage."

"it's a man's own business if he'd rather fiddle with a poem than invest in real estate."

"I think the letter itself is important as a form, just as the poet-form, and it has a way of saying that the poem-form does not, and also the other way around,"

" I am not addicted to reading my stuff after writing it. It's like hanging onto faded flowers."

"Show me an old poet and I'll show you, more often than not, either a madman or a master."

"Writers seem to write to be known as writers."

"The first process of learning or creation is the undoing of teaching."

"Creation can't bear up under restrictions."

"I've found that the least talented scream the loudest,"

"you compare only the best to the best. You can't help it. Once a man has leaped 18 feet straight up into the air and then comes back and only leaps 13 feet, it's just not enough for us."

"The mass, both the actual mass and the Artistic mass (in the sense of large practicing numbers only) are always far behind, practicing safety not only in the material and economic life but in the life of the so-called soul."

"Perhaps the first atrocity was the human foot upon the untouched."

"That's the danger of talking. You talk talk talk all wax and wallow and pretty soon you don't know what you are saying... I don't... that's why I feel much better when I am mostly quiet."

"art is art and names are secondary. We are not politicians of the literary scene."

"I don't believe in pain as a pusher of art. Pain is too often. We can breathe without it. If it will let us."

"I am not even a real artist - know I am a fake of some sort - sort of write from the bowels of disgust, almost entirely. Yet, when I see what the others are doing, I go on with it."

"Story had meant something to me. And I guess it's part of the world's ways to see it go, and I wonder what's going to be next?"

"The only thing intelligent about a good art is if it shakes you alive, otherwise it's hokum,"

Sharp and moving reflections and ruminations on the artistry and craft of writing from one of our most iconoclastic, riveting, and celebrated masters.Charles Bukowski’s stories, poems, and novels have left an enduring mark on our culture. In this collection of correspondence—letters to publishers, editors, friends, and fellow writers—the writer shares his insights on the art of creation.On Writing reveals an artist brutally frank about the drudgery of work and canny and uncompromising about the absurdities of life—and of art. It illuminates the hard-edged, complex humanity of a true American legend and counterculture icon—the “laureate of American lowlife” (Time)—who stoically recorded society’s downtrodden and depraved. It exposes an artist grounded in the visceral, whose work reverberates with his central ideal: “Don't try.”Piercing, poignant, and often hilarious, On Writing is filled not only with memorable lines but also with Bukowski’s trademark toughness, leavened with moments of grace, pathos, and intimacy.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI

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