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Who really said it

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

Written by Charles Bukowski 1920–1994 · German-born American poet, novelist and underground columnist
Verified In copyright

This one is real. The sentence appears in Notes of a Dirty Old Man (1969), the book that collected Bukowski’s underground newspaper column — Wikiquote files it under that work ↗, and a moderator at the Bukowski Forum located it on p. 161 of his Virgin paperback ↗. What is not right is the shorter “hard way / simple way” version the quote sites print.

Last verified 17 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Verified quote & credit

“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” Charles Bukowski, Notes of a Dirty Old Man (1969). Verified via Quotle.info

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by The Estate of Charles Bukowski; City Lights Books). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

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In context

Evoking the world of Charles Bukowski — German-born American poet, novelist and underground columnist. Theme: "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". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "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". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

Where the line actually appears

Source
Notes of a Dirty Old Man
First published
1969, Essex House — published by City Lights Books, San Francisco, from 1973
Originally
Collected from the weekly column Bukowski began writing for the LA underground paper Open City in 1967
Located at
p. 161 in the Virgin paperback edition; pagination differs between editions

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. Aphorism

Given as Goodreads’ page of quotations from the book and the 2016 Bukowski Forum post reproduce it, in lower case and as a single semicolon-hinged sentence; Wikiquote prints the same words under the same work but normalises the opening capital. The shortened, two-sentence version that circulates online is a later tidy-up.

Notes of a Dirty Old Man, City Lights Books, 1973 (Internet Archive record)

How we verified this

  • Wikiquote ↗ prints the sentence word for word inside its “Notes of a Dirty Old Man (1969)” section — a work section, not the unsourced pile at the foot of the page.
  • A reader asked the Bukowski Forum ↗ to source the line in 2009 and got only guesses. In 2016 a moderator reopened the thread, gave the original wording, and named the book and page from his own Virgin paperback.
  • Goodreads’ page of quotations from the book ↗ carries the same lower-case wording under the same title, independently of the forum.
  • A search of Quote Investigator ↗ returns nothing on this line, and no competing author was found claiming it — the dispute here is over wording, not authorship.
In copyright

Notes of a Dirty Old Man was first published in 1969 ↗, decades after the 1931 cut-off for US public domain, so the text remains in copyright; City Lights Books has published it since 1973. The single sentence is reproduced here for identification and comment, with attribution.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

The name is right. The wording usually isn’t.

For once the famous name checks out — this really is Bukowski, and it really is in a book. The trouble is that the version doing the rounds has been quietly rewritten, and for years nobody could say which book it came from.

“An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.” Paraphrase

This compressed form is what the aggregators carry — AZQuotes prints it with no book cited at all ↗, and Goodreads carries it as a bare, unsourced attribution ↗. Bukowski’s printed sentence is longer, hinged on a semicolon, and says “difficult,” not “hard.”

The Captain Is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship Wrong source

The first guess when the question was raised on the Bukowski Forum in 2009 ↗. The member who suggested it went back through the book, could not find the line, and reported finding only a passage developing the same idea. The thread sat unanswered until 2016.

Bukowski’s “genius” variants Same thought, different line

Several near-identical sentences circulate as though they were this quote — “genius” in place of “artist,” “profound” in place of “difficult.” Those are separately documented Bukowski restatements ↗ from interviews and Hot Water Music, not this sentence.

The attribution holds: Wikiquote places the full sentence inside Notes of a Dirty Old Man (1969) ↗. It is the semicolon and the word “difficult” that get lost in transit.

Context

An aphorism that keeps getting simplified

Bukowski was writing a weekly column for Open City, a Los Angeles underground paper, from 1967 until the paper folded; Essex House gathered the columns into Notes of a Dirty Old Man in 1969, and City Lights has published the book since 1973. The line arrives in that setting — not as literary theory, but as one flat sentence dropped into pages of bar talk and bad weekends.

He clearly liked the thought, because he kept coming back to it. Bukowski Forum members have collected several restatements ↗, including a version in the story “How to get published” in Hot Water Music and two in interviews reprinted in Sunlight Here I Am, where the subject shifts from the artist to the genius.

A sentence about saying difficult things simply, steadily simplified in transit.

Read the full story

The irony is hard to miss. The version that dominates search results — “An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.” — is tighter, more quotable, and not what he printed. Someone did to the sentence exactly what the sentence recommends, and then kept his name on it.

Bukowski’s own text runs as one sentence hinged on a semicolon, with “is a man who” in both halves — and in lower case where Goodreads and the Bukowski Forum reproduce it, though Wikiquote and this page both normalise the opening capital. The semicolon and the word “difficult” are what to keep if you are quoting him rather than quoting the internet.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Creativity Simplicity Wisdom

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Wikiquote: Charles Bukowskien.wikiquote.org

Lists the sentence verbatim under its “Notes of a Dirty Old Man (1969)” work section.
Bukowski Forum: “Identify this quote”bukowskiforum.com

The 2009 sourcing request and the 2016 moderator reply giving the original wording and page.
Bukowski Forum: variations threadbukowskiforum.com

Three documented restatements of the idea across interviews and Hot Water Music, alongside the Notes of a Dirty Old Man original.
Notes of a Dirty Old Man (City Lights, 1973)archive.org

Internet Archive catalogue record for the City Lights edition; access-restricted, so no full text.
Wikipedia: Notes of a Dirty Old Manen.wikipedia.org

Publication history: Essex House, 1969, collecting the underground newspaper columns.
Wikipedia: Charles Bukowskien.wikipedia.org

Biography, and the 1967 start of the Open City column the book is named for.

The author

Who wrote it

Charles Bukowski

1920–1994 · German-born American poet, novelist and underground columnist

Born in Andernach, Germany in 1920 and raised in Los Angeles, Bukowski spent most of his working life sorting mail for the US Post Office before quitting in 1969 to write full time on an offer from Black Sparrow Press. From 1967 he wrote a weekly column called Notes of a Dirty Old Man for the LA underground paper Open City — loose, drunk, funny prose that swerved without warning into flat statements like this one. He published poems, stories and six novels, and died in Los Angeles in 1994.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Cite this source

Charles Bukowski, Notes of a Dirty Old Man (Essex House, 1969; repr. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1973). The line is located at p. 161 in the Virgin paperback edition.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘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’?” Last verified 17 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/an-intellectual-is-a-man-who-says-a-simple-thing-in-a/

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