Charles Bukowski: Trending quotes

“Man was born to die. What did it mean? Hanging around and waiting. Waiting for the ‘A train.’ Waiting for a pair of big breasts on some August night in a Vegas hotel room. Waiting for the mouse to sing. Waiting for the snake to grow wings. Hanging around.”

Source: Factotum (1975), Ch. 72, Janeway Smithson

Charles Bukowski book Pulp

Pulp (1994)

“WHAT'S WRONG WITH ASSHOLES, BABY? YOU'VE GOT AN ASSHOLE, I'VE GOT AN ASSHOLE! YOU GO TO THE STORE AND BUY A PORTERHOUSE STEAK, THAT HAD AN ASSHOLE! ASSHOLES COVER THE EARTH! IN A WAY TREES HAVE ASSHOLES BUT YOU CAN'T FIND THEM, THEY JUST DROP THEIR LEAVES. YOUR ASSHOLE, MY ASSHOLE, THE WORLD IS FULL OF BILLIONS OF ASSHOLES. THE PRESIDENT HAS AN ASSHOLE, THE CARWASH BOY HAS AN ASSHOLE, THE JUDGE AND THE MURDERER HAVE ASSHOLES... EVEN THE PURPLE STICKINPIN HAS AN ASSHOLE!”

“But I couldn't help thinking, god, all these mailmen do is drop in letters and get laid. This is the job for me, oh yes yes yes.”

Post Office (1971)

“… don't wait for the good woman. She doesn't exist. There are women who can make you feel more with their bodies and their souls but these are the exact women who will turn the knife into you right in front of the crowd. Of course, I expect this, but the knife still cuts. The female loves to play man against man, and if she is in a position to do it there is not one who will not resist. The male, for all his bravado and exploration, is the loyal one, the one who generally feels love. The female is skilled at betrayal. and torture and damnation. Never envy a man his lady. Behind it all lays a living hell.”

Post Office (1971)

“"Wouldn't you like to come in and have a cup of tea and dry off?"
"Lady, don't you realize that we don't even have time to pull up our shorts?"
"Pull up your shorts?"
"YES, PULL UP OUR SHORTS!" I screamed at her and walked off into the wall of water.”

in a letter to Steven Richmond (Published in Charles Bukowski: Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life by Howard Sounes)
Letters

“"I've given you my time. It's all I've got to give - it's all any man has. And for a pitiful buck and a quarter an hour."… "my time so that you can live in your big house on the hill and have all the things that go with it. If anybody has lost anything on this deal, on this arrangement… I've been the loser.”

Post Office (1971)

“It's 4:30 in the morning, it's always 4:30 in the morning.”

Source: Factotum (1975), Ch. 49, Henry Chinaski

“there were these people
on the ground,
they were reaching up their
arms and trying to pull me
down
but
they couldn't do
it.

I felt like pissing on
them.
they were so
jealous.
all they had to do was
to work their way
slowly up to it
as I had
done.

such people think
success grows on
trees.

you and I,
we know
better.”

Rooming House Madrigals (1954)

“Human relationships didn't work anyhow. Only the first two weeks had any zing, then the participants lost their interest. Masks dropped away and real people began to appear: cranks, imbeciles, the demented, the vengeful, sadists, killers. Modern society had created its own kind and they feasted on each other. It was a duel to the death--in a cesspool.”

"transport"
The Last Night of the Earth Poems (1992)

Charles Bukowski book Women

Women (1978)

“I walk through rooms of the dead, streets of the dead, cities of the dead: men without eyes, men without voices; men with manufactured feelings and standard reactions; men with newspaper brains, television souls and high school ideals.”

“Van Gogh writing his brother for paints
Hemingway testing his shotgun
Celine going broke as a doctor of medicine
the impossibility of being human
Shakespeare a plagiarist
Beethoven with a horn stuck into his head against deafness
the impossibility the impossibility
Nietzsche gone totally mad
the impossibility of being human
all too human
this breathing
in and out
out and in
these punks
these cowards
these champions
these mad dogs of glory
moving this little bit of light toward us
impossibly.”

in Sunlight Here I Am: Interviews and Encounters, 1963-1993 (2003), p. 24

“I found out that Hollywood is more crooked, dumber, crueler, stupider than all the books I've read about it. They didn't go deeply enough into how it lacks art, and soul, and heart— how it's really a piece of crap. There are too many hands directing, there're too many fingers in the pot, and they're all kind of ignorant about what they're doing. They're greedy, and they're vicious. So you don't get much of a movie.”

"Beasts Bounding Through Time" (1986)

“a woman can
drop
out of your
life and
forget you
real fast.
a woman
can't go anywhere
but UP
after
leaving you,
honey.”

Interview included in the documentary Bukowski: Born Into This. Discussing the movie adaptation of Barfly and his novel Hollywood.
Interviews

“The difference between a brave man and a coward is a coward thinks twice before jumping in the cage with a lion. The brave man doesn't know what a lion is. He just thinks he does.”

"pulled down shade"
The Last Night of the Earth Poems (1992)

Charles Bukowski book Notes of a Dirty Old Man

Notes of a Dirty Old Man (1969)

“Janeway Smithson was a little, insane, grey-haired bantam rooster of a man. He loaded five or six of us in one cab, and we rolled down to the bed of the L. A. River. Now in those days the L. A. River was a fake - there was no water, just a wide, flat, dry cement runway. The bums lived down there by the hundreds in little cement alcoves under the bridges and overpasses. Some of them even had potted plants in front of their places. All they needed to live like kings was canned heat (Sterno) and what they picked out of the nearby garbage dump. They were tan and relaxed and most of them looked a hell of a lot healthier than the average Los Angeles business man. Those guys down there had no problems with women, income tax, landlords, burial expenses, dentists, time payments, car repairs, or with climbing into a voting booth and pulling the curtain closed.”

“I didn't even have a uniform, just a cap. I wore my regular clothes. The way my shackjob Betty and I drank there was hardly money for clothes.”

Source: Factotum (1975), Ch. 71

“LSD, yeah, the big parade – everybody's doin' it now. Take LSD, then you are a poet, an intellectual. What a sick mob. I am building a machine gun in my closet now to take out as many of them as I can before they get me.”

Post Office (1971)

“You have a very strange face," she said. "You're not really ugly." "Number four shipping clerk, working his way up." "Have you ever been in love?" "Love is for real people." "You sound real." "I dislike real people." "You dislike them?" "I hate them." We drank some more, not saying much. It continued to snow. Gertrude turned her head and stared into the crowd of people. Then she looked at me. "Isn't he handsome?" "Who?" "That soldier over there. He's sitting alone. He sits so straight. And he's got all his medals on.”

in a letter to Steven Richmond (Published in Charles Bukowski: Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life by Howard Sounes)
Letters