Charles Bukowski Quotes

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554 Quotes for Challenging, Inspiring, and Questioning Life's Perspectives

“I was an Agnostic. Agnostics didn't have much to argue about.”

“She was desperate and she was choosey at the same time and, in a way, beautiful, but she didn’t have quite enough going for her to become what she imagined herself to be.”

“I had no Freedom. I had nothing.”

“The park grass looked greener, the park benches looked better and the flowers were trying harder.”

“from the beginning, through the
middle years and up to the
end:
too bad, too bad, too bad.”

“I was a bore and didn't know when to smile or fake it. Or rather worse, I did but didn't.”

“yes, Wagner and the storm intermix with the wine as nights like this run up my wrists and up into my head and back down into the gut”

“most days go
nowhere
but the avoidance
of pain and
dissolution are
lovely.”

“when you're young
a pair of
female
high-heeled shoes
just sitting
alone
in the closet
can fire your
bones;
when you're old
it's just
a pair of shoes
without
anybody
in them
and
just as
well.”

“I was fairly poor
but most of my money went
for wine and
classical music.
I loved to mix the two
together.”

“As we live we all get caught and torn by various traps. Nobody escapes them. Some even live with them. The idea is to realize that a trap is a trap. If you are in one and you don't realize it, then you're finished.”

“We’ve died so many times now that we can only wonder why we still care.”

“Pretty words, as pretty women, wrinkle up and die.”

“It’s when you hide things that you choke on them.”

“I'll use the knives for spreading
jam, and the gas to warm
my greying love.”

“It’s not so much that nothing means
anything but more that it keeps meaning
nothing.
there’s no release, just gurus and self-
appointed gods and hucksters.
the more people say, the less there is to say.
even the best books are dry sawdust.”

“How are his poems?"
"He's not as good as he thinks he is, but then most of us feel that way.”

“First paycheck I get, I thought, I'm going to get myself a room near the downtown L. A. Public Library.”

“Love dries up, I thought
as I walked back to the
bathroom, even faster
than sperm.”

“theres no chance
at all:
we are all trapped
by a singular
fate.
nobody ever finds
the one.”

“my hands dead
my heart dead
silence
adagio of rocks
the world ablaze
that's the best
for me.”

“You were destroyed by what you befriended.”

“all people start to
come apart finally
and there it is:
just empty ashtrays in a room
or wisps of hair on a comb
in the dissolving moonlight.”

“there are policemen in the street
and angels in the clouds”

“I know what a park bench is and the landlord's knock. There are only two things wrong with money: too much or too little.”

“Well, people got attatched. Once you cut the umbilical cord they attatched to the other things. Sight, sound, sex, money, mirages, mothers, masturbation, murder, and Monday morning hangovers.”

“i dunno," i said, "but i have an idea that people who don't think too much tend to look younger longer”

“it was going to be all right.
at last.
for a while.”

“terror finally becomes almost
bearable
but never quite

terror creeps like a cat
crawls like a cat
across my mind”

“It was only the matter of a new voice. Nobody listened to an old voice anymore. Old voices became a part of one's self, like a fingernail.”

“Experience can dull. With most men experience is a series of mistakes; the more experience you have the less you know.”

“One more drink and you're dead. This is no way to talk to a suicide head.”

“I hated you when it would have taken less courage
to love.”

“magic persists without us
no matter what we may do to try to spoil it”

“He fell off the table like a crab looking for the sea.”

“If you can hit a guy once, you can hit him twice.”

“Baby," I said, "I’m a genius but nobody knows it but me."

She looked down at me. "Get up off the floor you damn fool and get me a drink.”

“Sometimes you die sometimes you don’t.”

“Sex was a trap, a snare. It was for animals.”

“I was still proud of that moment
back then
when Jed handed me
that pint
and
I drained
a third of it
with all the disciples
watching.
damn, there was no way
it seemed
we could ever
lose
but we did.

and it took me
3 or 4 decades to
move on just a
little.
and Jed,
if you are still here
tonight,
(I forgot to tell you
then)
here's a thanks
for that drink.”

“I think that everything should be made available to everybody, and I mean LSD, cocaine, codeine, grass, opium, the works. Nothing on earth available to any man should be confiscated and made unlawful by other men in more seemingly powerful and advantageous positions. More often than not Democratic Law works to the advantage of the few even though the many have voted; this, of course, is because the few have told them how to vote. I grow tired of 18th century moralities in a 20th century space-atomic age. If I want to kill myself I feel that should be my business. If I go out and hold up gas stations at night to pay for my supply it is because the law inflates a very cheap thing into an escalated war against my nerves and my soul.”

“Morals were restrictive, but they were grounded on human experience.”

“Money is like sex. It seems much more important when you don't have any…”

“Nothing was ever in tune. People just blindly grabbed at whatever there was: communism, health foods, zen, surfing, ballet, hypnotism, group encounters, orgies, biking, herbs, Catholicism, weight-lifting, travel, withdrawal, vegetarianism, India, painting, writing, sculpting, composing, conducting, backpacking, yoga, copulating, gambling, drinking, hanging around, frozen yogurt, Beethoven, Bach, Buddha, Christ, TM, H, carrot juice, suicide, handmade suits, jet travel, New York City, and then it all evaporated and fell apart. People had to find things to do while waiting to die. I guess it was nice to have a choice.”

“Something was always after a man. It never relented. No rest, ever.”

“It was the poor part of town—small houses and courts with mailboxes full of spiders, mailboxes hanging by one nail, old women inside rolling cigarettes and chewing tobacco and humming to their canaries and watching you, an idiot lost in the rain.”

“I thought about taking a shower but I could see the headlines: MAILMAN CAUGHT DRINKING THE BLOOD OF GOD AND TAKING A SHOWER, NAKED, IN A ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH. …I found out later that mail for the church was delivered to the parish house around the corner. But now, of course, I knew where to… shower when I'm down and out.”

“I had first learned that I was an idiot in the school yard. I was taunted and poked at and jeered, as were the other one or two idiots. My only advantage over the other one or two, two idiots. My only advantage over the other one or two, who were beaten and chasen, was that I was sullen. When surrounded I was not terrified. They never attacked me but would finally turn on one of the others and beat them as I watched.”

“I'm no preacher but I can tell you this-the lives that people lead are driving them crazy and their insanity comes out in the way they drive.”