Top 66 Quotes by Charles Bukowski

When I say that basically writing is a hard hustle, I don't mean that it is a bad life, if one can get away with it. It's the miracle of miracles to make a living by the typer.

Never envy a man his lady. Behind it all lays a living hell.

Shakespeare didn't work at all for me.

I kept writing not because I felt I was so good, but because I felt they were so bad, including Shakespeare, all those. The stilted formalism, like chewing cardboard.

In my work, as a writer, I only photograph, in words, what I see.

To not to have entirely wasted one's life seems to be a worthy accomplishment, if only for myself.

To do a dull thing with style-now that's what I call art.

Show me a man who lives alone and has a perpetually clean kitchen, and 8 times out of 9 I'll show you a man with detestable spiritual qualities.

The female loves to play man against man. And if she is in a position to do it, there is not one who will resist.

I am a dangerous man when turned loose with a typewriter.