Charles Bukowski: Trending quotes

Source: Hot Water Music

Variant: We don't even ask for happiness, just a little less pain.
Source: From a letter to William Packard from 1985 (published in Reach for the Sun - the 3rd volume of Bukowski correspondence)
Context: Sex, love, duty, God, family are not to be bargained with against happiness, and we don’t even ask happiness, just a little less pain.

Variant: being alone never felt right. sometimes it felt good, but it never felt right.
Source: Women

Source: Factotum

Source: What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire

Source: Barfly

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

Variant: You have to die a few times before you actually live.
Source: The People Look Like Flowers at Last

Variant: Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.

Pulp (1994)

Ham On Rye (1982)
Source: Ham on Rye
Context: The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose, they sliced a little more off you, until there was nothing left. At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole goddamned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidate who reminded them most of themselves. I had no interests. I had no interest in anything. I had no idea how I was going to escape. At least the others had some taste for life. They seemed to understand something that I didn't understand. Maybe I was lacking. It was possible. I often felt inferior. I just wanted to get away from them. But there was no place to go.

Source: The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966