Charles Bukowski quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Charles Bukowski on Wise Famous Quotes.

When Ginsburg is at the top of his game you might as well put down your toys and listen.

In the old days,' he said, 'writers' lives were more interesting than their writing. Now-a-days neither their lives nor the writing is interesting.

We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our education system.

It was going to be alright. At last. For a while.

The secret is writing down one simple line after another.

The parents of rich kids tended to be more patriotic because they had more to lose if the country went under.

That was love, that was bravery. Shit, who could really stand me? anyone who could stand me had a lot of forgiveness of soul.

Parties sickened me. I hated the game-playing, the dirty play, the flirting, the amateurs drunks, the bores.

This incompleteness is all we have.

I dunno," i said, "but i have an idea that people who don't think too much tend to look younger longer

I want to be with you. It's as simple, and as complicated as that.

We use such big words to move nowhere.

There's nothing unusual about love.

Sometimes a man doesn't know what to do about things and sometimes it's best to lie very still and try not to think at all about anything.

People run from rain but sit in bathtubs full of water.

I began counting each fool that passed me. I got up to 50 in two-and-one-half-minutes, then stepped into the next bar.

If I bet on humanity, I'd never cash a ticket.

Then I was a young man a thousand years old, and now I am an old man waiting to be born.

She had wild eyes, slightly insane. She also carried an overload of compassion that was real enough and which obviously cost her something.

I like the way Mahler wandered about in his music and still retained his passion. He must have looked like an earthquake walking down the street.

I went to the bathroom and threw some water on my face, combed my hair. If I could only comb that face, I thought, but I can't.

The poet, as a rule, is a half-man - a sissy, not a real person, and he is in no shape to lead real men in matters of blood, or courage.

The less I needed, the better I felt.

I guess the only time most people think about injustice is when it happens to them.

The laughter of the mutilated who still need love, and her blessed eyes run deep into her head like mountain springs far in and cool and good.

I like to prowl ordinary places
and taste the people-
from a distance.

do it, do it, do it. do it. all the way all the way.

Humanity, you never had it from the beginning." That was my motto.

I write as a function. Without it I would fall ill and die. It's as much a part of one as the liver or intestine, and just about as glamorous.

I could make it. I could win drinking contests, I could gamble. Maybe I could pull a few holdups. I didn't ask much, just to be left alone.

Take a writer away from his typewriter
and all you have left
is
the sickness
which started him
typing
in the
beginning

I took no pride in my solitude; but I was dependent on it. The darkness of the room was like sunlight to me.

I wasn't much of a petty thief. I wanted the whole world or nothing.

I have met free man in the strangest of places and at ALL ages.

So where do you go? Back to the bottle And back to a tiny room somewhere. And wait. And wait, and wait. That's all.

I never pump up my vulgarity. I wait for it to arrive in its own terms.

They thought I had guts
they were wrong
I was only frightened of
more important things

and gamblers are dry and empty souls, their hearts have been sucked dry, there's no music in their walk, they are colorless and condemned.

I was born to hustle roses down the avenue of the dead.

I didn't like the eight hour job. I didn't even like the four hour job, even though I couldn't get one.

To create art means
to be crazy alone
forever.

To die on a kitchen floor at 7 o'clock in the morning while other people are frying eggs is not so rough unless it happens to you.

There was nothing glorious about the life of a drinker or the life of a writer.

Death is nothing, brother, it's life that's hard

But isn't there always
one good thing
to look back on?
think of
how many cups of coffee we
drank together.

When someone else's truth is the same as your truth, and he seems to be saying it just for you, that's great. I

How can you be true and kind at the same time? how?

She was perfect, pure maddening sex, and she knew it, and she played on it, dripped it, and allowed you to suffer for it.

It seemed better to delay thinking.

Hospitals and jails and whores: these are the universities of life. I've got several degrees. Call me Mr.

crawled like a blind slug into the
web

the sea is made of blood

It's 4:30 in the morning, it's always 4:30 in the morning.

I went to the kitchen and felt-up the turkey.

Meanwhile the 3 a.m. drunks of the world would lay in their beds, trying in vain to sleep, and deserving that rest, if they could find it.

The only time a man needed a lot of women was when none of them were any good.

If you can only remain pure in your stupidity, someday you may get a phone call from hell.

You must some day die for nothing
as I
have lived.

If you persisted long enough, the good luck usually came. Most people couldn't wait on the luck, though, so they quit.

People are strange: They are constantly angered by trivial things, but on a major matter like totally wasting their lives, they hardly seem to notice.

My part of the game is that I must live the best I can.

Love is a fog that burns with the first daylight of reality.

Love be damned now as love was damned when it first arrived.

a poem is a city burning

That's your response to everything: drink?"
"No, that's my response to nothing.

I am going to start selling air in dark orange bags marked: moon-blooms

I got the sad sads and all I want to do is fuck you.

She was consumed by 2 simple things:
despair, loneliness; and oh 2 more:
youth and beauty

The world had somehow gone too far, and spontaneous kindness could never be so easy.

You can steal my women but don't play with my whiskey.

I have gotten so used to melancholia that I greet it like an old friend.

There's a light somewhere.
It may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.

Angels,
we have grown apart.

I feel no grief for being called something
which
I am not;
in fact, it's enthralling, somehow, like a good
back rub

Careful poetry and careful people live only long enough to die safely.

Love it or leave it

My heart is a thousand years old.

When I get down to my last dime I'll just walk over to skid row."
"There are some real weirdos down there."
"They're everywhere.

There's no way I can stop writing, it's a form of insanity.

Their lives full of canned, mutilated laughter.

It's hard to drink when you dance. And it's hard to dance when you drink.

I lost almost all the blood in my body in 1957

Any damn fool can beg up some kind of job; it takes a wise man to make it without working.

There are policemen in the street and angels in the clouds

"she' mad but she'
magic. there' no lie in her fire.

And you turn over
to your left side
to get the sun
on your back
and out
of your eyes

God is a lonely place without steak.

That's how it is with books, isn't it: They're not in a hurry. They'll wait for you till you're ready. People empty me. I have to go away to refill.

The price of creation is never too high. the price of living with other people always is.

I will always carry you, inside, outside, on my fingertips, and at brain edges.

That the young rich smell the stink of the poor and learn to find it a bit amusing. They had to laugh, otherwise it would be too terrifying.

What's so nice about laying in bed all day?" "I don't have to see anybody." "You like that?" "Oh, yes.

I kneel in the nights before tigers that will not let me be. what you were will not happen again. the tigers have found me and I do not care.

She was consumed by 3 simple things:
drink, despair, loneliness; and 2 more:
youth and beauty

And the writers keep writing and the artists keep painting but it doesn't mean too much.

We have wasted History like a bunch of drunks shooting dice back in the men's crapper of the local bar.

I made practice runs down to skid row to get ready for my future.

If I hadn't been a drunkard, I probably would have committed suicide long ago.

But now and then, a woman walks up, full blossom, a woman just bursting out of her dress ... a sex creature, a curse, the end of it all.

But I gave the girl my address and phone number, thinking we might make it on the springs. (Harriet, you never arrived.)