Charles Bukowski Quotes

I went over to see Marina two or three or four times a week. I knew as long as I could see the girl I would be all right…. Soon after, I got a letter from Fay. She and the child were living in a hippie commune in New Mexico. It was a nice place, she said. Marina would be able to breathe there. She enclosed a little drawing the girl had made for me.

People don't need love. What they need is success in one form or another. It can be love but it needn't be.

I was a bore and didn't know when to smile or fake it. Or rather worse, I did but didn't.

Dear child, I only did to you what the sparrow did to you; I am old when it is fashionable to be young; I cry when it is fashionable to laugh. I hated you when it would have taken less courage to love.

And there I was, 225 pounds, perpetually lost and confused, short legs, ape-like upper body, all chest, no neck, head too large, blurred eyes, hair uncombed, 6 feet of geek, waiting for her.

be it peace or happiness let it enfold you

in the cupboard sits my bottle like a dwarf waiting to scratch out my prayers. I drink and cough like some idiot at a symphony, sunlight and maddened birds are everywhere, the phone rings gamboling its sound against the odds of the crooked sea; I drink deeply and evenly now, I drink to paradise and death and the lie of love.

I was fairly poor but most of my money went for wine and classical music. I loved to mix the two together.

If there are junk yards in hell, love is the dog that guards the gates.

Human relationships are strange. I mean, you are with one person a while, eating and sleeping and living with them, loving them, talking to them, going places together, and then it stops.

I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there.

I feel strangely normal.

Boring damned people. All over the earth. Propagating more boring damned people. What a horror show. The earth swarmed with them.

My ambition is handicapped by laziness

What's genius? I don't know but I do know that the difference between a madman and a professional is that a pro does as well as he can within what he has set out to do and a madman does exceptionally well at what he can't help doing.

and the color in my eyes has gone back into the sea.

I got up and walked back to my roominghouse. The moonlight was bright. My footsteps echoed in the empty street and it sounded as if somebody was following me, I looked around. I was mistaken. I was quite alone.

I don't know if this is true to you but for me sometimes it gets so bad that anything else say like looking at a bird on an overhead power line seems as great as a Beethoven symphony. then you forget it and you're back again.

I have no time for things that have no soul.

Turgenev was a very serious fellow but he could make me laugh because a truth first encountered can be very funny. When someone else's truth is the same as your truth, and he seems to be saying it just for you, that's great.

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

It was only the matter of a new voice. Nobody listened to an old voice anymore. Old voices became a part of one's self, like a fingernail.

Do some living and get yourself a typewriter.

I don't remember going to bed, but in the morning, there I was.

the tigers have found me and I do not care.

I carry death in my left pocket. Sometimes I take it out and talk to it: "Hello, baby, how you doing? When you coming for me? I'll be ready.

one can never be sure whether it's good poetry or bad acid

there are policemen in the street and angels in the clouds

and then there are some who believe that old relationships can be revived and made new again. but please if you feel that way don't phone don't write don't arrive

there was something about that city, though it didn't let me feel guilty that I had no feeling for the things so many others needed. it let me alone. sitting up in my bed the lights out, hearing the outside sounds, lifting my cheap bottle of wine, letting the warmth of the grape enter me as I heard the rats moving about the room, I preferred them to humans. being lost, being crazy maybe is not so bad if you can be that way undisturbed. New Orleans gave me that. nobody ever called my name.

I don't carry notebooks and I don't consciously store ideas. I try not to think that I am a writer and I am pretty good at doing that. I don't like writers, but then I don't like insurance salesmen either.

In my next life I want to be a cat. To sleep 20 hours a day and wait to be fed. To sit around licking my ass.

sometimes I hate you," she said.

Slavery was never abolished, it was only extended to include all the colors.

We don’t even ask happiness, just a little less pain.

there is always one woman to save you from another and as that woman saves you she makes ready to destroy

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.

Don't fight your demons. Your demons are here to teach you lessons. Sit down with your demons and have a drink and a chat and learn their names and talk about the burns on their fingers and scratches on their ankles. Some of them are very nice.

nobody can save you but yourself and you’re worth saving. it’s a war not easily won but if anything is worth winning then this is it.

People don't do me much good.

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.

Don’t do it. Don’t love me.

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

It's better to do a dull thing with style than a dangerous thing without it.

Where some god pissed a rain of reason to make things grow only to die.

I wasn’t lonely. I experienced no self-pity. I was just caught up in a life in which I could find no meaning.

True revolution comes from true revulsion; when things get bad enough the kitten will kill the lion.

our bones like stems into the sky will forever cry victory