Charles Bukowski Quotes

bad writing's like bad women: there's just not much you can do about it

Fiction is an improvement on life

Yes?’ he asked, looking at me over the sheet. ‘I’m a writer temporarily down on my inspirations.’ ‘Oh, a writer, eh?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Are you sure?’ ‘No, I’m not.’ ‘What do you write?’ ‘Short stories mostly. And I’m halfway through a novel.’ ‘A novel, eh?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘What’s the name of it?’ ‘”The Leaky Faucet of My Doom.”‘ ‘Oh, I like that. What’s it about?’ ‘Everything.’ ‘Everything? You mean, for instance, it’s about cancer?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘How about my wife?’ ‘She’s in there too.

dogs and angels are not very far apart

To me Art (poetry) is a continuous and continuing process and that when a man fails to write good poetry he fails to live fully or well.

For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stonewritten. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.

Some people never go crazy, What truly horrible lives they must live.

Love is a form of prejudice. I have too many other prejudices.

I've learned to feel good when I feel good. it's better to be driven around in a red porsche than to own one. the luck of the fool is inviolate.

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

As we live we all get caught and torn by various traps. Nobody escapes them. Some even live with them. The idea is to realize that a trap is a trap. If you are in one and you don't realize it, then you're finished.

Are you becoming what you've always hated?

I want so much that is not here and do not know where to go.

..few writers like other writers' works. The only time they like them is when they are dead or if they have been for a long time. Writers only like to sniff their own turds. I am one of those. I don't even like to talk to writers, look at them or worse, listen to them. And the worst is to drink with them, they slobber all over themselves, really look piteous, look like they are searching for the wing of the mother. I'd rather think about death than about other writers. Far more pleasant.

An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.

We must.. We must bring our own light to the darkness

I like women who haven’t lived with too many men. I don’t expect virginity but I simply prefer women who haven’t been rubbed raw by experience. There is a quality about women who choose men sparingly; it appears in their walk in their eyes in their laughter and in their gentle hearts. Women who have had too many men seem to choose the next one out of revenge rather than with feeling. When you play the field selfishly everything works against you: one can’t insist on love or demand affection. You’re finally left with whatever you have been willing to give which often is: nothing.

Maybe when I get in the grave, things will be beautiful.

Almost everybody is born a genius and buried an idiot.

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

I remember awakening one morning and finding everything smeared with the color of forgotten love.

All our days are marked with/ unexpected/ affronts--some/ disastrous, others/ less so/ but the process is/ wearing and/ continuous./ Attrition rules./ Most give/ way/ leaving/ empty spaces/ where people should/ be.

When you drank the world was still out there, but for the moment it didn’t have you by the throat.

The centuries are sprinkled with rare magic with divine creatures who help us get past the common and extraordinary ills that beset us

A dry period for me means perhaps going two or three nights without writing. I probably have dry periods but I'm not aware of them and I go on writing, only the writing probably isn't much good.

The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.

Complaint is often the result of an insufficient ability to live within the obvious restrictions of this god damned cage.

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

the beautiful are found in the edge of a room crumpled into spiders and needles and silence and we can never understand why they left,they were so beautiful. they dont make it, the beautiful die young and leave the ugly to their ugly lives.

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

I can almost understand why people leap from bridges.

I can never drive my car over a bridge without thinking of suicide. I can never look at a lake or an ocean without thinking of suicide.

It was too much. The comfortable people made comfortable jokes about weather and things but I sat mostly silent saying a word or so when necessary a word or so trying to hide from them the fact that I was a fool and feeling terrible And I was numb, numb again, numb again again and again, numbness and pain swelling in me.

I loved you like a man loves a woman he never touches, only writes to, keeps little photographs of.

I lie as truthfully as I can.

I don't know about other people, but when I wake up in the morning and put my shoes on, I think, Jesus Christ, now what?

The hangover was brutal but he didn't mind. It told him he had been somewhere else, someplace good.

If you have the ability to love, love yourself first.

My body gnaws at me from one side and my spirit gnaws at me from the other.

The streets were full of insane & dull people. Most of them lived in nice houses and didn't seem to work, and you wondered how they did it.

The male, for all his bravado and exploration, is the loyal one, the one who generally feels love. The female is skilled at betrayal and torture and damnation.

my beerdrunk soul is sadder than all the dead christmas trees of the world.

What a woman wants is a reaction. What a man wants is a woman.

Love is all right for those who can handle the psychic overload. It's like trying to carry a full garbage can on your back over a rushing river of piss.

I heard an airplane passing overhead. I wished I was on it.

Some of my poems indicate that I am writing while living alone after a split with a woman, and I've had many splits with women. I need solitude more often when I'm not writing than when I am.

and when love came to us twice and lied to us twice we decided to never love again that was fair fair to us and fair to love itself. we ask for no mercy or no miracles; we are strong enough to live and to die and to kill flies, attend the boxing matches, go to the racetrack, live on luck and skill, get alone, get alone often, and if you can't sleep alone be careful of the words you speak in your sleep; and ask for no mercy no miracles; and don't forget: time is meant to be wasted, love fails and death is useless.

like the fox I run with the hunted and if I’m not the happiest man on earth I’m surely the luckiest man alive.