Charles Bukowski Quotes
Source: Factotum (1975), Ch. 52
“people are not good to each other.
perhaps if they were
our deaths would not be so sad.”
Source: Love Is a Dog from Hell
“sometimes I hate you,"
she said.”
Source: Love Is a Dog from Hell
Source: Women (1978)
Context: I was drawn to all the wrong things: I liked to drink, I was lazy, I didn't have a god, politics, ideas, ideals. I was settled into nothingness; a kind of non-being, and I accepted it. I 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. On the other hand, when I got drunk I screamed, went crazy, got all out of hand. One kind of behavior didn't fit the other. I didn't care.
“having nothing to struggle
against
they have nothing to struggle
for.”
Source: You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense
Source: Betting on the Muse: Poems and Stories
Source: You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense
Source: Love Is a Dog from Hell
“a good book
can make an almost
impossible
existence,
liveable
( from 'the luck of the word' )”
Source: Betting on the Muse: Poems and Stories
“Most people are not ready for death, theirs or anybody elses.”
Source: The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship
Source: Women
“the worst thing," he told me,
"is bitterness, people end up so
bitter.”
Source: You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense
“There's no way I can stop writing, it's a form of insanity.”
Source: Women
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: You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense
“I'm not the cruel type, but they are, and that's the secret.”
Source: Tales of Ordinary Madness
“mercy, I think, doesn't the human race know anything about mercy?”
Source: Love Is a Dog from Hell
“I have gotten so used to melancholia that I greet it like an old friend.”
Source: Love Is a Dog from Hell
Source: Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame
“I'm too careless. I don't put out enough effort. I'm tired.”
Source: South of No North
“writing about a writer's block is better than not writing at all”
Source: The Last Night of the Earth Poems
“I tell you such fine music waits in the shadows of hell.”
Source: The Last Night of the Earth Poems
Source: You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense
"The Meaning of Life: The Big Picture", Life Magazine (December 1988)
Interviews
Context: For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stonewritten. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command or faith a dictum. I am my own God. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.
“The wisdom to quit is all we have left.”
Source: The People Look Like Flowers at Last
“Many a good man has been put under the bridge by a woman.”
Source: Women (1978)
