Charles Bukowski Quotes

I've lost my writing skills since college. I couldn't write a book. It would take a long time.

The number of people who can copulate properly may be few; the number who can write well are infinitely fewer.

There never was an age in which so many people were able to write badly.

I'm not a born writer, and I don't enjoy writing.

There's many times this year I've sat back and thought, I'm making a living from making things up. It's the only skill I have so I've been really lucky.

It took me ten minutes to write this very sentence. I'm no writer. This is not my calling.

I suck at titles.

I can still put down some pretty nasty stuff on paper, which is what I enjoy doing.

Writing has been as difficult for me as for people who don't like to write and as little fun.

Writing seems to be more difficult as you move through the years.

Every journalist has a novel in him, which is an excellent place for it.

The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.

You can't be a storyteller and a speechwriter at the same time.

I kept trying to write these books that were sort of outside of my realm, and I kept failing.

I have always found writing very difficult.

I'm a fan of writing, and writing letters, because I hate when I'm trying to get a thought out, and I can't.

I always encourage people in the early parts of their career to focus on writing. If you can communicate clearly, if you can articulate a thought, if you can write a great story, then you're going to be successful.

If you asked someone, 'Can you play the violin?' and he says, 'I don't know, I have not tried, perhaps I can,' you laugh at him. Whereas about writing, people always say: 'I don't know, I have not tried,' as though one had only to try and one would become a writer.

Skill in writing frees you to write what you want to write. It may also show you what you want to write. Craft enables art.

When I was younger, the main struggle was to be a 'good writer.' Now I more or less take my writing abilities for granted, although this doesn't mean I always write well.

You like to write. It's the single most important quality for someone who wants to be a writer. But not in itself enough.

You can't write well what you don't read for pleasure. If it doesn't entertain you, it's not going to entertain anyone else.

The truth is I tried to write for years and I wasn't very good.

Writing is basically a job for people who like punching themselves in the face, I’m pretty sure.

You can't teach people to write well. Writing well is something God lets you do or declines to let you do.