You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire.

"If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery--isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you're going to try, go all the way.  There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is."


"We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing."


"If you're losing your soul and you know it, then you've still got a soul left to lose"


"An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way."

-Charles Bukowski 
He is one of America's best-known contemporary writers of poetry and prose, and, many would claim, its most influential and imitated poet. He began writing poetry at 35.