More Bukowski.

Excerpts from "Portions of a Wine-Stained Notebook."

• Why do you write?
  I write as a function. Without it I would fall ill and die. It's as much a part of one as the liver or intestine, and just about as glamorous.
  
  
• Does pain make a writer?
  Pain doesn't make anything, nor does poverty. The artist is there first. What becomes of him depends upon his luck. If his luck is good (worldly-speaking) he becomes a bad artist. If his luck is bad, he becomes a good one.
  
  
• all that I know is that I believe in the sound of music ... all else is squabble.
  
  
• perhaps the greatest achievement of Man is his ability to die, and his ability to disregard it. certainly poetry and paint are no deterrent, nor the high hurdles of the mind over the skulls of realism. let us say, finally, that truth is not all that matters -- often, it is the putting aside of a truth.
  
  
• a good man can climb any flag and salute prosperity (we're told) but how many good men can you get in an air-tight jar? and how many good poets can you find at IBM or snoring under the sheets of a fifty-dollar whore? more good men have died for poetry than all your crooked battlefields were worth; so if I fall drunk in a four-dollar room: you messed up your history -- let me dawdle in mine.
  
  
• When I have a poem accepted by a magazine that prints so-called quality poetry, I ask myself where I have failed. Poetry must continually move out of itself, away from shadows and reflections. The reason so much bad poetry is written is that it is written as poetry instead of concept. And the reason the public doesn't understand poetry is that there is nothing to understand, and the reason most poets write is that they think they understand. Nothing is to be understood or "regained." It is simply to be written. By someone. Sometime. And not too often.
  
  
• our Art is our agony turned to reason. We are the prize of a twisted mind, dirty bits of clay that sit and wait on some imbecile table in some imbecile darkness. our world turns on a violated wheel held up by the thin spokes of poetry...
  
  
• I don't force the hand to write the lie for the sake of creating another poem.
  
  
• death batters at my mind like a wild bat enclosed in my skull.
  
  
• Do you believe in the price of life? he asks. I don't quite understand your question. I do not believe in the price of anything. I am a dreamer. I believe in possession without pain. I am not a realist. I lack backbone, I hate boredom and striving. I'd rather listen to the overture to Samson by Handel.
  
  
• the dead are so very old and the
  living so very practical.
  bestial rhymes assault my heart, congregate there, stamp their flabby feet amongst the plague and wreckage.
  
  
• death, at last, is a bore -- no more than pulling a shade. we do not die all at once, generally, but piece by piece, little by little. the young die hardest and live hardest and understand nothing. but they are the most generous and the truest and better fit to lead than the cautious wise. who survives out of candor? show me those who are left and I will show you nothing. the young have yet to surrender to fact. and fact is nothing but the grime of centuries. the young bud is the hardest. I am old, so you cannot censure me with prejudice.
  
  
• Do you want an ending?
  write it yourself.