Quotes and anectdotes from the wise to the foolish, and the courageous to the drunk

Charles Bukowski Novelist

  • Gender: Male
  • Citizenship: Germany
  • Born: Aug 16, 1920
  • Died: Mar 9, 1994

Henry Charles Bukowski was a German-born American writer.

His writing was influenced by the social, cultural, and economic ambience of his home city of Los Angeles. His work addresses the ordinary lives of poor Americans, the act of writing, alcohol, relationships with women, and the drudgery of work. Bukowski wrote thousands of poems, hundreds of short stories and six novels, eventually publishing over sixty books. The FBI kept a file on him as a result of his column, Notes of a Dirty Old Man, in the LA underground newspaper Open City.

In 1986 Time called Bukowski a "laureate of American lowlife". Regarding Bukowski's enduring popular appeal, Adam Kirsch of The New Yorker wrote, "the secret of Bukowski's appeal. . . [is that] he combines the confessional poet's promise of intimacy with the larger-than-life aplomb of a pulp-fiction hero."

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

I would be married, but I'd have no wife, I would be married to a single life. alone

You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time all else is grandiose romanticism or politics. politics & romantic

We have wasted History like a bunch of drunks shooting dice back in the men's crapper of the local bar. history

Bad taste creates many more millionaires than good taste. good