Charles Bukowski: Trending quotes (page 12)

“I was only kidding about the hundred," she says.

oh," I say, "what will it cost me?"

she lights her cigarette with
my lighter and looks at me
through the flame:

her eyes tell me.

look," I say, "I don't think I
can ever pay that price again.”

“To do a dull thing with style-now that's what I call art.”

“Don't try.”

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

“people are not good to each other.
perhaps if they were
our deaths would not be so sad.”

“Food is good for the nerves and the spirit. Courage comes from the belly – all else is desperation.”

“That's what friendship is, sharing the prejudice of experience.”

“as she
drove me through the hills everything screamed inside of
me, and I kept saying as we drove along
(to myself, of course)
fucker, it will pass,
everything passes,
it's all a joke
a joke on you”

“Fiction is an improvement on life”

“In the morning it was morning and I was still alive.
Maybe I'll write a novel, I thought.
And then I did.”

“sometimes I hate you,"
she said.”

“I was settled into nothingness; a kind of non-being, and I accepted it. It 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.”

“To create art means
to be crazy alone
forever.”

“When I begin to doubt my ability to work the word, I simply read another writer and know I have nothing to worry about. My contest is only with myself, to do it right, with power, and force, and delight, and gamble.”

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

“I
think that the
world should be full of cats and full of rain, that's all, just
cats and
rain, rain and cats, very nice, good
night.”

“It seemed better to delay thinking.”

“That’s when I first learned that it wasn’t enough to just do your job, you had to have an interest in it, even a passion for it.”

“I have one problem, I don’t hate people. They disgust me and I want to get away from them. I do not have hatred. I have an escape mechanism.”