Charles Bukowski Quotes

Pull a string, a puppet moves ... each man must realize that it can all disappear very quickly: the cat, the woman, the job, the front tire, the bed, the walls, the room; all our necessities including love, rest on foundations of sand - and any given cause, no matter how unrelated: the death of a boy in Hong Kong or a blizzard in Omaha ... can serve as your undoing. all your chinaware crashing to the kitchen floor, your girl will enter and you'll be standing, drunk, in the center of it and she'll ask: my god, what's the matter? and you'll answer: I don't know, I don't know.

It was hard for me to believe. When recess was over I sat in class and thought about it. My mother had a hole and my father had a dong that shot juice. How could they have things like that and walk around as if everything was normal, and talk about things, and then do it and not tell anybody?

escape from the black widow spider is a miracle as great as art. what a web she can weave slowly drawing you to her she'll embrace you then when she's satisfied she'll kill you still in her embrace and suck the blood from you.

I was so thin I could slice bread with my shoulderblades, only I seldom had bread.

I lapsed into my pathetic cut-off period. Often with humans, both good and bad, my senses simply shut off, they get tired, I give up. I am polite. I nod. I pretend to understand because I don’t want anybody to be hurt. That is the one weakness that has lead me into the most trouble. Trying to be kind to others I often get my soul shredded into a kind of spiritual pasta. No matter. My brain shuts off. I listen. I respond. And they are too dumb to know that I am not there.

If something burns your soul with purpose and desire, it’s your duty to be reduced to ashes by it. Any other form of existence will be yet another dull book in the library of life.

you boys can keep your virgins give me hot old women in high heels with asses that forgot to get old.

I should think that many of our poets, the honest ones, will confess to having no manifesto. It is a painful confession but the art of poetry carries its own powers without having to break them down into critical listings. I do not mean that poetry should be raffish and irresponsible clown tossing off words into the void. But the very feeling of a good poem carries its own reason for being... Art is its own excuse, and it’s either Art or it’s something else. It’s either a poem or a piece of cheese.

The years have gone by quickly. Death sits in the seat next to me. We make a lovely couple.

Food is good for the nerves and the spirit. Courage comes from the belly – all else is desperation.

Oh, I don’t mean you’re handsome, not the way people think of handsome. Your face seems kind. But your eyes - they’re beautiful. They’re wild, crazy, like some animal peering out of a forest on fire.

To do a dull thing with style-now that's what I call art.

I never understood society. i undersand that it works somehow and that it functions as a reality and that its realities are necessary to keep us from worse realities. but all i sense are that are plenty of police and jails and judges and laws and that what is meant to protect me is breaking me down.

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.

when I am feeling low all i have to do is watch my cats and my courage returns

We use such big words to move nowhere.

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.

I walked around the block twice, passed 200 people and failed to see a human being.

Humanity, you never had it to begin with.

what matters most is how well you walk through the fire

Of course, there would always be arguments. That is the nature of Woman. They like the mutual exchange of dirty laundry, a bit of screaming, a bit of dramatics. Then an exchange of vows.

and our few good times will be rare because we have the critical sense and are not easy to fool with laughter

we only asked for leopards to guard our thinning dreams.

eleven months. now she's gone gone as they go.

News travels fast in places where nothing much ever happens.

After dinner or lunch or whatever it was -- with my crazy 12-hour night I was no longer sure what was what -- I said, "Look, baby, I'm sorry, but don't you realize that this job is driving me crazy? Look, let's give it up. Let's just lay around and make love and take walks and talk a little. Let's go to the zoo. Let's look at animals. Let's drive down and look at the ocean. It's only 45 minutes. Let's play games in the arcades. Let's go to the races, the Art Museum, the boxing matches. Let's have friends. Let's laugh. This kind of life like everybody else's kind of life: it's killing us.

well, i don't know about you but I'm going to try everything! War, women, travel, marriage, children, the works. [...]. I want to know about things, what makes them work!

too often, the only escape is sleep

People were interesting at first. Then later, slowly but surely, all the flaws and madness would manifest themselves. I would become less and less to them; they would mean less and less to me.

I grow tired of 18th century moralities in a 20th century space-atomic age

Few beautiful women were willing to indicate in public that they belonged to someone. I had known enough women to realize this. I accepted them for what they were and love came hard and very seldom. When it did it was usually for the wrong reasons. One simply became tired of holding back love and let it go because it needed some place to go. Then, usually, there was trouble.

Sweet Christ, you must know that a man will go further for any poem than for any woman ever born.

There are only two things wrong with money: too much or too little.

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.

Never bring a lot of money to where a poor man lives. He can only lose what little he has. On the other hand it is mathematically possible that he might win whatever you bring with you. What you must do, with money and the poor, is never let them get too close to one another.

The Artist," an ancient sage had once said, "is always sitting on the doorsteps of the rich.

Four days alone with nothing. Emerge empowered. The first human face you see will knock you back 50%.

They laughed. Things were funny. They weren't afraid to care. There was no sense to life, to the structure of things.

I am not a man who looks for solutions in God or politics. If somebody else wants to do the dirty work and create a better world for us and he can do it, I will accept it.

If you can't write the next line, well, you're dead. The past doesn't matter.

There is light somewhere.

It seems I make a lot of mistakes and it seems that I am not allowed any.

I have seen too many men wilt and go silly under a little light, and then they continue to write and get published, turning out pure crap under a name that has become a bad habit. The next poem is all that counts. You can't stand on past poems.

I went to the worst of bars hoping to get killed but all I could do was to get drunk again.

You don't go on "probably" when love and guns are in hand.

I would give anything for a female's hand on me tonight. they soften a man and then leave him listening to the rain.

it is all ash and dry leaves and grief gone like an ocean liner.

Beware of those who seek constant crowds; they are nothing alone.