Charles Bukowski

1920–1994 · Los Angeles poet, novelist & underground columnist

Born Heinrich Karl Bukowski in Andernach, Germany, on 16 August 1920 and raised in Los Angeles, he spent years in low-wage work and the US Post Office before Black Sparrow Press publisher John Martin put him on a stipend in 1969 so he could write full time. From 1967 he produced Notes of a Dirty Old Man, a column for the underground paper Open City — the source of most of the prose City Lights later gathered into Erections, Ejaculations, Exhibitions, and General Tales of Ordinary Madness. He died in San Pedro, Los Angeles, on 9 March 1994.

Traced to source

3 quotes we’ve traced to Charles Bukowski

“An intellectual is a man who says a simple thing in a difficult way; an artist is a man who says a difficult thing in a simple way”

Verified

“The free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it — basically because you feel good, very good, when you are near or with them”

Verified

“We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us”

Verified

Not actually Charles Bukowski

Often misattributed to Charles Bukowski

Famous lines widely pinned on Charles Bukowski that we’ve traced to someone else.

“Find what you love and let it kill you”

actually Kinky Friedman

“The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence”

actually Bertrand Russell

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