Charles Bukowski Quotes

To conceive music, to execute it in front of others, to make it so others can do it...it can be pretty humbling, and kind of scary. So yeah, I don't really feel in competition with anybody. Not because I feel elitist, but because I have enough self-competition. I'm always struggling.

I have grown in my writing and I care about it now and I know how important it is to write stuff.

In football you have an adversary; in cinema that adversary is yourself.

One of the first things I learned about acting was, the only person you compete against is yourself.

The genuine truth, and I do think about this a lot, is that I'm one of the least competitive people you'll ever meet. Except with myself.

I don't compete with other discus throwers. I compete with my own history.

I am not the one who has to try to beat me.

We all understand that this isn't about me beating you and you beating me. It's about each individual competing against himself.

It's just like, damn - I'm competing with myself.

My toughest opponent has always been me.

Then I decided I would spend the summer writing a novel. That would fix a lot of people.

The game has such a hold on golfers because they compete not only against an opponent, but also against the course, against par, and most surely- against themselves.

Compete with yourself, not with others.

The only competition that matters is the one that takes place within yourself.

For me, running is both exercise and a metaphor. Running day after day, piling up the races, bit by bit I raise the bar, and by clearing each level I elevate myself. At least that’s why I’ve put in the effort day after day: to raise my own level. I’m no great runner, by any means. I’m at an ordinary – or perhaps more like mediocre – level. But that’s not the point. The point is whether or not I improved over yesterday. In long-distance running the only opponent you have to beat is yourself, the way you used to be.

Writing is a subtle art that is reached mostly by self-discovery and experimentation.

Singing other people's material was perceived, I think, as a weakness of my persona. The effect, though, was to make me dig my heels in and try even harder to combine the two.

I only want to write. And there's no college for that except life.

Tennis's beauty's infinite roots are self-competitive. You compete with your own limits to transcend the self in imagination and execution. Disappear inside the game: break through limits: transcend: improve: win.

When we are succeeding - that is, when we have begun to overcome our self-doubt and self-sabotage, when we are advancing in our craft and evolving to a higher level - that's when panic strikes. When we experience panic, it means that we're about to cross a threshold. We're poised on the doorstep of a higher plane.

So many people doubted me. They motivated me every single day, to be, who I am.

I seek strength, not to be greater than other, but to fight my greatest enemy, the doubts within myself

The principle is competing against yourself. It's about self-improvement, about being better than you were the day before.

I believe the target of anything in life should be to do it so well that it becomes an art. When you read some books they are fantastic, the writer touches something in you that you know you would not have brought out of yourself. He makes you discover something interesting in your life. If you are living like an animal, what is the point of living? What makes daily life interesting is that we try to transform it to something that is close to art.

I wrote two million words of crap. Maybe I'm just a slow learner .