Hollywood

by Charles Bukowski

The gods had sent Sarah to add ten years to my life. The gods kept driving me toward the blade, then, at the last moment, lifting my head off the block. Very strange, those gods.

Within an hour I was 45 thousand dollars richer. 30 years of starvation and rejection were starting to kick in.

The world had somehow gone too far, and spontaneous kindness could never be so easy. It was something we would all have to work for once again.

Don’t let anybody tell you different. Life begins at 65.

My idea about the whole thing was that most people weren’t alcoholics, they only thought that they were. It was something that couldn’t be rushed. It took at least twenty years to become a bonafide alcoholic. I was on my 45th year and didn’t regret any of it.

Poor blacks hated. Poor whites hated. It was only when blacks got money and whites got money that they mixed.

“That’s your answer to everything: drink.” “No, that’s my answer to nothing.”

And almost anything upsets or insults a movie audience, while people who read novels and short stories love to be upset and insulted.

You had to become a writer each time you sat down to the machine. It wasn’t that hard once you sat down in front of the machine. What was hard sometimes was finding that chair and sitting in it.