Writers Write, Talkers Talk

As a youth I saw too many movies of the great Artist, and the writer was always some tragic and very interesting chap with a fine goatee, blazing eyes, and inner truths springing to his tongue continually. What a way to be, I thought. But it isn't so. The best writers that I know talk very little, I mean those who are doing the good writing. In fact, there is nothing duller than a good writer. In a crowd or even with one other person, he is always busy (subconsciously) recording everything. He is not interested in speechmaking or being the life of the party. He is greedy, he saves his juices for the typewriter. You can talk away inspiration, you can destroy god-given genius with your mouth. Energy will only spread so far. I too am greedy. One must be. [Perhaps this is why few literature professors write novels.]

Charles Bukowski, "The House of Horrors," 1971 in Charles Bukowski: Absence of the Hero, 2010