Love is a form of prejudice. You love what you need, you love what makes you feel good, you love what is convenient. How can you say you love one person when there are ten thousand people in the world that you would love more if you ever met them? But you'll never meet them.
Charles BukowskiI drive around the streets an inch away from weeping, ashamed of my sentimentality and possible love.
Charles BukowskiTrouble and pain were what kept a man alive. Or trying to avoid trouble and pain. It was a full time job.
Charles BukowskiSomebody at one of these places asked me: "What do you do? How do you write, create?" You don't, I told them. You "don't try". That's very important: not to try, either for Cadillacs, creation or immortality. You wait, and if nothing happens, you wait some more. It's like a bug high on the wall. You wait for it to come to you. When it gets close enough you reach out, slap out and kill it. Or if you like it's looks, you make a pet out of it.
Charles BukowskiI guess for me Hemingway is a lot like it is for others: he goes down well when we are young.
Charles BukowskiThere's a small balcony here, the door is open and I can see the lights of the cars on the Harbor Freeway south, they never stop, that roll of lights, on and on. All those people. What are they doing? What are they thinking? We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't.
Charles Bukowski