To experience real agony is something hard to write about, impossible to understand while it grips you; you're frightened out of your wits, can’t sit still, move, or even go decently insane.

This play was a one-off performance. I've always had the geographical and spiritual feeling of being here. He was then 49 years old.

In 1986 Time called Bukowski a "laureate of American lowlife". His writing was influenced by the social cultural and economic ambience of his home city of Los Angeles. [is that] he combines the confessional poet's promise of intimacy with the larger-than-life aplomb of a pulp-fiction hero.