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.

“I never felt right being alone; sometimes it felt good but it never felt right.”

Charles Bukowski book Women

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

“How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 8:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?”

Charles Bukowski book Factotum

Source: Factotum

“there is a place in the heart that
will never be filled

a space

and even during the
best moments
and
the greatest times
times

we will know it

we will know it
more than
ever

there is a place in the heart that
will never be filled
and

we will wait
and
wait

in that space.”

Charles Bukowski

“Of course it's possible to love a human being if you don't know them too well.”

Charles Bukowski

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

Charles Bukowski

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

“Do you hate people?”

“I don't hate them… I just feel better when they're not around.”

Charles Bukowski

Source: Barfly

“The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts while the stupid one are full of confidence.”

Charles Bukowski

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

“You have to die a few times before you can really
live.”

Charles Bukowski book The People Look Like Flowers at Last

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

“Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.”

Charles Bukowski

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

“Hell was what you made it.”

Charles Bukowski book Pulp

Pulp (1994)

“At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole god-damned 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.”

Charles Bukowski book Ham on Rye

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.

“Angels,
we have grown apart.”

Charles Bukowski

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