A Quote by Charles Bukowski

There's nothing like privacy. You know, I like people. It's nice that they might like my books and all that...but I'm not the book, see? I'm the guy who wrote it, but I don't want them to come up and throw roses on me or anything. I want them to let me breathe.
I don't want my kids to be like me, I don't want my daughter to date a guy like me. You know, for a guy like me success is to take care of my children to take care of their life and make 'em cushioned. I don't want them to be around people like me. You know, success for me would be that they never have the opportunity of being in the presence of someone like me.
If you want your rock stars that are completely 100 percent serious about themselves and you want them to pretend like they're 25, I'm probably not the guy for that. But if you want to come and say, 'Hey, you know that guy right there, he's just being himself. I kind of like him for that,' you know, then that's me.
What people have to realize is this: You have rappers who are popular or whatever for the time being, but that don't mean you necessarily want to dress like them. You may have a guy who sells five million records; do you want to dress like him? When you see me, you think you may want to dress like that guy because that guy is fly.
I want to see children curled up with books, finding an awareness of themselves as they discover other people's thoughts. I want them to make the connection that books are people's stories, that writing is talking on paper, and I want them to write their own stories. I'd like my books to provide that connection for them.
I like waking up in the morning and thinking, 'Mmm, I might go to Paris today.' I don't want to ask anyone if they want to come with me or mind me going. I like being my own agent. I have my grandsons and son. If I didn't have them, it would be different.
There's a lot of people who don't want anything from me but to laugh and have a good time. You see them at the show and they like - they dress up to come see your show and stuff. And they pack these auditoriums and it's a lot of fun, man. It's like, this is how I started, and it's still fun for me.
I dress how I feel that day. If I'm feeling tired, you might see me in a hoodie. If I'm feeling like I want to dress up, you might see me in a button-down. I try to mix it up with my shoes, but I don't really look at it as competitive, like, 'I want to dress better than this guy.' I'm just myself.
I want to be the apostle of self destruction. I want my book to affect man's reason, his emotions, his nerves, his whole animal nature. I should like my book to make people turn pale with horror as they read it, to affect them like a drug, like a terrifying dream, to drive them mad, to make them curse and hate me but still to read me.
I still use the pronoun she for my publicity materials, and for mainstream media stuff, for two reasons: the first is that I do a lot of work in public schools, and I want those young women and girls to see every kind of she there can be. I want them to see my biceps and my shorn hair and shirt and tie and for some of them to see me as a possibilityI want them to see me living outside of the boxes, because they might be asphyxiating in their own box and need to see there is air out here for them to breathe, that all they have to do is lift the lid a little.
If I want to see someone, I want to see them, and if I don't, then I don't. My friends are always telling me I have to play hard to get because I'll pretty much say to a guy, 'I like you - let's go hang out.' But my friends are like, 'You can't do that! You have to string this guy along.' And I'm just like, 'No! I won't! I just want to go on the date!' It's a nightmare - I definitely haven't figured it out yet.
There's plenty of people I don't like that we put fights on with. It's not up to me whether I like them or dislike them, it's what the fans want to see.
You know me better than anyone, and you're my best friend. I don't think there's anything you could say to me that would lead me to believe that you're doing it just to hurt me. If there's one thing I've come to know about you, it's that you're not even capable of something like that. Why do you think I like spending time with you so much? Because you're a good guy. A nice guy.
I like people, I really do. I like meeting people. But most of the time I would rather be at home reading a book than reading in a bookstore. It's a performance, and it ends up being all right, and then you have a nice shot of bourbon afterwards, and it's all good. I want to please people. I want to be nice. I want to be liked. As a result I say yes to everything. But it takes a lot of vital energy out of me.
I learned that as a director, you're around all these talented people, so you have this window that all these really good ideas can come in to help your movie, so you're crazy to close them. You need to be inspiring people, engaging people. There are lots of people who are really good at their jobs but might not know or feel like they want to come up to people and get them to participate and want to do their best.
I get people who come up to me and are like, 'You make me wanna live my dream.' I was them, so I'm like, 'Me, out of all people? No way.' Eddie Guerrero did that for me, so to have little girls and guys tell me I inspire them, I didn't know that came with the job, but it's so cool.
Sure, kids want to read whatever is the hot book, and of course they want to read fantasy and any kind of speculative fiction, but they also like to read stories with kids that look just like them, that have the same problems as them. And I've noticed that what they particularly want to see is to see those characters prevail. So they don't want sanitized situations. They want stories to be raw, they want them to be gritty, but they also do want to see the hope at the end of the story.
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