Charles Bukowski Quotes

When I was young I was depressed all the time. But suicide no longer seemed a possibility in my life. At my age there was very little left to kill. It was good to be old, no matter what they said. It was reasonable that a man had to be at least 50 years old before he could write with anything like clarity.

Ithink that theworld should be full of cats and full of rain, that's all, justcats andrain, rain and cats, very nice, goodnight.

from the beginning, through themiddle years and up to theend:too bad, too bad, too bad.

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.

You understand, we just don't fuck with truth.

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

Are there good governments and bad governments? No, there are only bad governments and worse governments.

that your power of commandwith simple language wasone of the magnificent things ofour century.(from the poem: result)

I went to the kitchen and felt-up the turkey.

What is your advice to young writers?""Drink, fuck and smoke plenty of cigarettes.""What is your advice to older writers?""If you're still alive, you don't need any advice.""What is the impulse that makes you create a poem?""What makes you take a shit?

I think I need a drink.''Almost everybody does only they don't know it.

People were usually much better in their letters than in reality. They were much like poets in this way.

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

I'd decided the campus was just a place to hide. There were some campus freaks who stayed on forever. The whole college scene was soft. They never told you what to expect out there in the real world. They just crammed you with theory and never told you how hard the pavements were. A college education could destroy an individual for life. Books could make you soft. When you put them down, and really went out there, then you needed to know what they never told you.

I love you butdon't know what todo.

If I never see you again I will always carry youinsideoutsideon my fingertipsand at brain edgesand in centerscentersof what I am ofwhat remains.

There were no judgments to be made, yet out of necessity one had to select. Beyond good and evil was all right in theory, but to go on living one had to select: some were kinder than others, some were simply more interested in you, and sometimes the outwardly beautiful and inwardly cold were necessary. The kinder ones fucked better, really, and after you were around them a while they seemed beautiful because they were.

Genius could be the ability to say a profound thing in a simple way, or even to say a simple thing in a simpler way.

having nothing to struggleagainstthey have nothing to strugglefor.

there's no clarity.there was never meant to be clarity.

since some people had told me that I was ugly, I always preferred shade to the sun, darkness to light

I was drawn to all the wrong things: I liked to drink, I was lazy, I didn’t have a god, politics, ideas, ideals. I was settled into nothingness; a kind of non-being, and I accepted it. I didn’t make for an interesting person. I didn’t want to be interesting, it was too hard. What I really wanted was only a soft, hazy space to live in, and to be left alone. On the other hand, when I got drunk I screamed, went crazy, got all out of hand. One kind of behavior didn’t fit the other. I didn’t care

for meobedience to another is the decay of self.for though every being is similareach being is differentand to herd our differencesunder one lawdegrades each self.

She would have been a better fuck in Greece, maybe. America was a shitty place to fuck.

Animals are inspirational. They don’t know how to lie. They are natural forces.

of one hundred movies there's one that is fair, one that's good and ninety eight that are very bad. most movies start badly and steadily get worse

There was no sense to life, to the structure of things. D.H. Lawrence had known that. You needed love, but not the kind of love most people used and were used up by. Old D.H. had known something. His buddy Huxley was just an intellectual fidget, but what a marvelous one. Better than G.B. Shaw with that hard keel of a mind always scraping bottom, his labored wit finally only a task, a burden on himself, preventing him from really feeling anything, his brilliant speech finally a bore, scraping the mind and the sensibilities. It was good to read them all though. It made you realize that thoughts and words could be fascinating, if finally useless.

I felt like a still live fish on ice in a butcher’s counter on Friday morning.- On Cats

jan was an excellent fuck...she had a tight pussy and she took it like it was a knife that was killing her.

I wait on my fix:I am a poetry junkie.

beware women grownoldwho were neveranything butyoung

there is a loneliness in this world so great that you can see it in the slow movement of the hands of a clock

the rent is a little higher herebut so far I've been able to pay itand that's a miracle toolike still maybe being sanewhile thinking of guns and sidewalksand old ladies in libraries.

It was like the beginning of life and laughter. It was the real meaning of the sun

It's all overrated, man. Sex is only a great thing if you're not getting any.

I know that some nightin some bedroomsoonmy fingers willriftthroughsoft cleanhairsongs such as no radioplaysall sadness, grinninginto flow.

We’ve all heard that little woman who says, “Oh, it’s terrible what these young people do to themselves, in my lsi other drugs, is a terrible thing”.Then you look, the woman who speaks in this way: you have no eyes, no teeth, no brains, no soul, no ass, no mouth, no warmth, no spirit, nothing, just a stick… and avran made ​​you wonder how to reduce it in that state teas and pastries and the church.

There is nothing that teaches you more than regrouping after failure ad moving on. Yet most people are stricken wth fear. They fear failure so much that they fail.

...they would say 'he said this, he did that', but they would never say 'she said this, she did that'. So I would say, they are sick, and I am well. Pardon me.

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.

She was perfect, pure maddening sex, and she knew it, and she played on it, dripped it, and allowed you to suffer for it.

I wasn't sleeping on the streets at night. Of course, there were a lot of good people sleeping in the streets. They weren't fools, they just didn't fit into the needed machinery of the moment. And those needs kept altering.

Where did all the women come from? The supply was endless. Each one of them was individual, different. Their pussies were different, their kisses were different, their breasts were different, but no man could drink them all, there were too many of them, crossing their legs, driving men mad. What a feast!

Drinking is an emotional thing. It joggles you out of the standardism of everyday life, out of everything being the same. It yanks you out of your body and your mind and throws you against the wall. I have the feeling that drinking is a form of suicide where you're allowed to return to life and begin all over the next day. It's like killing yourself, and then you're reborn. I guess I've lived about ten or fifteen thousand lives now.

women were beyond me.they saw somethingdepraved.there was one waitressa little older thanI, she rather smiled,lingered when shebrought mycoffee.that was plenty for me, that wasenough.- Young in New Orleans

I decided to stay in bed until noon. Maybe by then half the world would be dead and it would only be half as hard to take.

Having a bunch of cats around is good. If you're feeling bad, just look at the cats, you'll feel better, because they know that everything is, just as it is.

And then she would smile, to show me how, and it was the saddest smile I ever saw.

Human relationships were strange. I mean, you were with one person a while, eating and sleeping and living with them, loving them, talking to them, going places together, and then it stopped. Then there was a short period when you weren't with anybody, then another woman arrived, and you ate with her and fucked her, and it all seemed so normal, as if you had been waiting just for her and she had been waiting for you. I never felt right being alone; sometimes it felt good but it never felt right.

as the shadows assumeshapesI fight the slowretreatnowmy once-promisedwindlingdwindlingnowlighting new cigarettespouring moredrinksit has been a beautifulfightstillis.

it does seemthe more we drinkthe better the wordsgo.

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.

Her eyes always had a frantic, lost look. He could never cure her eyes of that.

We’ve each given the hours of our lives in dull rote jobs for other men’s profit, and have been asked to be grateful for doing that.

Like anybody can tell you, I am not a very nice man. I don't know the word. I have always admired the villain, the outlaw, the son of a bitch. I don't like the clean-shaven boy with the necktie and the good job. I like desperate men, men with broken teeth and broken minds and broken ways. They interest me. They are full of surprises and explosions. I also like vile women, drunk cursing bitches with loose stockings and sloppy mascara faces. I'm more interested in perverts than saints. I can relax with bums because I am a bum. I don't like laws, morals, religions, rules. I don't like to be shaped by society.

The writer has no responsibility other than to jack off in bed alone and write a good page.

Some people never go crazy. Me, sometimes I'll lie down behind the couch for 3 or 4 days. They'll find me there. It's Cherub, they'll say, and they pour wine down my throat rub my chest sprinkle me with oils. Then, I'll rise with a roar, rant, rage - curse them and the universe as I send them scattering over the lawn. I'll feel much better, sit down to toast and eggs, hum a little tune, Suddenly become as lovable as a pink overfed whale. Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.

And it seems people should not build houses anymoreit seems people should stop working and sit in small rooms on second floorsunder electric lightswithout shades;it seems there is a lot to forgetand a lot not to doand in drugstores, markets, bars,the people are tired, they do not want to move, and I stand there at nightand look through this house and the house does not want to be built

Hell was what you made it

I am too sick to lay downthe sidewalks frighten methe whole damned city frightens me,what I will becomewhat I have becomefrightens me.