Charles Bukowski Quotes

Too often the people complain that they have done nothing with their lives and then they wait for somebody to tell them that this isn't so.

It’s nice enough to make a man weep, but I don’t weep, do you?

Was I the only person who was distracted by this future without a chance?

2 p.m. beer nothing matters but flopping on a mattress with cheap dreams and a beer as the leaves die and the horses die and the landladies stare in the halls; brisk the music of pulled shades, a last man's cave in an eternity of swarm and explosion; nothing but the dripping sink, the empty bottle, euphoria, youth fenced in, stabbed and shaven, taught words propped up to die.

Drink from the well of yourself and begin again.

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.

But then if you lied to a man about his talent just because he was sitting across from you, that was the most unforgivable lie of them all, because that was telling him to go on, to continue which was the worst way for a man without real talent to waste his life, finally. But many people did just that, friends and relatives mostly.

I knew it would be you

I needed a vacation. I needed 5 women. I needed to get the wax out of my ears. My car needed an oil change. I'd failed to file my damned income tax. One of the stems had broken off of my reading glasses. There were ants in my apartment. I needed to get my teeth cleaned. My shoes were run down at the heels. I had insomnia. My auto insurance had expired. I cut myself every time i shaved. I hadn't laughed in 6 years. I tended to worry when there was nothing to worry about. And when there was something to worry about, i got drunk.

It's possible to love a human being if you don't know them too well.

An artist is a man who says a difficult thing in a simple way

nobody can save you but yourself. you will be put again and again into nearly impossible situations. they will attempt again and again through subterfuge, guise and force to make you submit, quit and/or die quietly inside. nobody can save you but yourself

Never get out of bed before noon.

I was beaten down long ago in some alley in another world.

Now something so sad has hold of us that the breath leaves and we can't even cry.

There may not be a hell, but those who judge may create one. I think people are over-taught. They are over-taught everything. You have to find out by what happens to you, how you will react. I'll have to use a strange term here... "good." I don't know where it comes from, but I feel that there's an ultimate strain of goodness born in each of us. I don't believe in God, but I believe in this "goodness" like a tube running through our bodies. It can be nurtured. It's always magic, when on a freeway packed with traffic, a stranger makes room for you to change lanes... it gives you hope.

I would say that Mickey Mouse has a greater influence on the American public than Shakespeare, Milton, Dante, Rabelais, Shostakovitch, Lenin, and/or Van Gogh. Which says 'What?' about the American Public. Disneyland remains the central attraction of Southern California, but the graveyard remains our reality.

Your parents don't give you much love, do they?' 'I don't need that stuff,' I told her. 'Henry, everybody needs love.' 'I don't need anything.' 'You poor boy.

I no longer want it all, just some comfort and some sex and some minor love.

...having nothing to struggle against they have nothing to struggle for.

That was the trouble with being a writer, that was the main trouble—leisure time, excessive leisure time. You had to wait around for the buildup until you could write and while you were waiting you went crazy, and while you were going crazy you drank and the more you drank the crazier you got.

Do you hate people? I don't hate them...I just feel better when they're not around.

I guess we often get the deep blues, both of us, and wonder what it all means- the people, the buildings, the day by day things, the waste of time, of ourselves.

And don't forget: time is meant to be wasted, love fails and death is useless.

Don't wait for the good woman. She doesn't exist. There are women who can make you feel more with their bodies and their souls but these are the exact women who will turn the knife into you right in front of the crowd.

there is moss on the walls and the stain of thought and failure and waiting

people see so many movies that when they finally see one not so bad as the others, they think it's great. an Academy Award means that you don't stink quite as much as your cousin.

it's good to have things done with when they don't work it's also good not to hate or even forget the person you've failed with.

I was in love again. I was in trouble

There still might be a place for us somewhere.

I remember when each 4th lot was vacant and overgrown, and the landlord only go this rent when you had it, and each day was clear and good and each moment was full of promise.

The shortest distance between two points is often unbearable.

mercy, I think, doesn't the human race know anything about mercy?

I got lost somehow, began staring up her legs. I was always a leg man. It was the first thing I saw when I was born. But then I was trying to get out. Ever since I have been working in the other direction and with pretty lousy luck.

I am this fiery snail crawling home.

They have no idea that it can be done by a bus driver, a field hand, or a fry cook. They have no idea where it comes from. It comes from pain, damnation and impossibility. The blow to the soul of the gut. It comes from getting burned and seared and slugged. It comes from...new and awful places and the same old places.

Never trust a man in a jumpsuit

I am for the small man who has not forgotten, for the man who loves his beer and his women and his sunlight

Most people are much better at saying things in letters than in conversation, and some people can write artistic, inventive letters, but when they try a poem or story or novel they become pretentious.

Animals never worry about Heaven or Hell. Neither do I. Maybe that's why we get along.

it doesn't matter if Prince Charles falls off his horse or that the hummingbird is so seldom seen or that we are too senseless to go insane. coffee. give us more of that NOTHING coffee.

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

you are yesterday's bouquet so sadly raided

We waste days like mad blackbirds and pray for alcoholic nightsour silk-sick human smiles wrap around us like somebody else's confetti

Knowledge is knowing as little as possible.

we sat there smoking cigarettes at 5 in the morning.

Most people are not ready for death, theirs or anybody elses.

Our disappointment sits between us.