When I hear some people talking I am confounded with how far way they are from anything. Most of them speak what they have been taught, not what they have learned. And what they lack most are two things: gamble and humor. Especially the poets. The poets are the worst. But hell, I suppose if I were mainly a painter I'd say that the painters are the worst.
This is a rejection slip, and most of what we receive must be rejected otherwise our magazine would be ten miles long and nobody could afford to buy it even if we could afford to print it.
We too have been rejected and will be rejected again and again. In this business you must expect it. And when it happens you can either quit or write better or try another magazine.
It's true that sometimes a rejection is unwarranted. Our opinion is neither final or anything else. It's only our taste or lack of it. But we can only proceed as best as we think we might know how...
The best way a fake can cover is to call somebody else a fake. Their attacks on me are an affirmation that I"m doing things right. I just go on with what I'm doing.
The main thing about writing is to write, not to talk about writing.
"It's true that most health food people are not likeable. They are usually nuts in other ways and are seldom loners or self-contained. I don't like them. But don't let that get you away from the fact that they are right about nutrition. They just make too much of it."
"Just endure if possible. I watch my cat sleeping night and day and this teaches me more than all the books and all the past. Other times it doesn't help. Meanwhile, there's some wine, and the itch."
"I've found that the least talented scream the loudest, are the most abusive and the most self-assured. They've slept on my couches and puked on my rugs and drank my drinks and they have told me, continuously, of their greatness....Writers, please save me from the writers; the conversation of the Alvarado street whores was much more interesting, and more original."
"On some days there is total control, you drive the freeways better, you do everything better. Then the other days arrive when you even fear the check-out girl in the supermarket."
"I dig in the old garden a bit now and then. The neighbors like it when they see me doing that. A man working in his garden is not a dangerous man (they think). They've heard some wild screaming nights over here when I've gone mad on wine and run about the house naked, up and down the stairs, falling, cursing and all that. They prefer me in the garden."
"I think the best idea is to write them the way you want to write them, then look for a market. the deliberate slant automatically takes the juice out."
-Charles Bukowski, 1992
"...millions of dollars spent to create something more terrible than the actual lives of most living things; one should never have to pay an admission to hell."
"Things are very nice right now, and it's damn well time they should be. the health, the feelings, the flow is (are) still in good running order. my pre-training holds me in ultra good stead. carry on, rally forth, all that. shit, it's only the 8th round and I've got a good cornerman to patch up the cuts. rah rah rah. or have I finally gone nuts?"
"some girl in her twenties, just out of a madhouse, rather hanging around now and then. I find her quite sane, quite lovely...especially the color of the eye and the way it looks at me. she's quite nice to me but most women are at the start...then they trap you in, and BOOM!!!...the wake-up...and you think, after all those others, you should have known better...men are too adventurous...esp. old men like me...whiskey, women, horses...same old song...then you're in the cage, wondering what happened."
-Charles Bukowski, 1971
