Charles Bukowski Quotes

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

“if you think they didn't go crazy
in tiny rooms just like you're doing now without women without food without hope then you're not ready.”

“Turgenev was a very serious fellow but he could make me laugh because a truth first encountered can be very funny. When someone else's truth is the same as your truth, and he seems to be saying it just for you, that's great.”

“She was perfect, pure maddening sex, and she knew it, and she played on it, dripped it, and allowed you to suffer for it.”

“as a child
i suppose
i was not quite
normal.


my happiest times were
when
i was left alone in
the house on a
saturday.”

“My flesh looked like it wasn't trying. It looked like it hated being part of me.”

“I can't blame her. but
wonder why she's here with
me? where are the other
guys? how can you be
lucky? having someone the
others have abandoned?”

“It wasn't my day. My week. My month. My year. My life. God damn it.”

“It's all overrated, man. Sex is only a great thing if you're not getting any.”

“Only the boring get bored”

“Some people have written that my writing has helped them go on.
It has helped me too. The writing, the roses, the 9 cats.”

“not writing is not good but trying to write when you can't is worse.”

“Everything you own must be able to fit inside one suitcase; then your mind might be free.”

“I got up and walked back to my roominghouse. The moonlight was bright. My footsteps echoed in the empty street and it sounded as if somebody was following me, I looked around. I was mistaken. I was quite alone.”

“as the shadows assume
shapes
I fight the slow
retreat

now
my once-promise
dwindling
dwindling

now
lighting new cigarettes
pouring more
drinks

it has been a beautiful
fight

still
is.”

“People just weren't interesting. Maybe they weren't supposed to be. But animals, birds, even insects were. I couldn't understand it.”

“I like the way Mahler wandered about in his music and still retained his
passion. He must have looked like an
earthquake walking down the street.”

“human relationships simply aren't
durable.
I think back to the women in
my life.
they seem non-existent.”

“bad writing's like bad women: there's just not much you can do about it”

“too often, the only escape is sleep”

“I was glad I wasn’t in love, that I wasn’t happy with the world. I like being at odds with everything. People in love often become edgy, dangerous. They lose their sense of perspective.”

“A woman must be nursed into subsistence by love, where a man can become stronger by being hated." - from 'Cows in Art Class”

“Let' em learn or let' em die”

“our bones
like stems into the sky
will forever cry
victory”

“I never pump up my vulgarity. I wait for it to arrive in its own terms.”

“All a guy needed was a chance. Somebody was alway controlling who got a chance and who didn't.”

“I was getting depressed. My life wasn't going anywhere. I needed something, the flashing of lights, glamour, some damn thing. And here I was, talking to the dead. I finished my first drink. The second was ready.”

“There still might be a place for us somewhere.”

“There is always somebody about to ruin your day, if not your life.”

“well, death says, as he walks by, I'm going to get you anyhow no matter what you've been: writer, cab-driver, pimp, butcher, sky-diver, I'm going to get you”

“I read my books at night, like that, under the quilt with the overheated reading lamp. Reading all those good lines while suffocating. It was magic.”

“the gods play no
favorites.”

“If I bet on humanity, I'd never cash a ticket.”

“It didn't pay to trust another human being. Humans didn't have it, whatever it took.”

“He had long nostril hairs, powerfully intimidating, like an unscheduled nightmare.”

“The trouble with these people is that their cities have never been bombed and their mothers have never been told to shut up.”

“It seems I make a lot of mistakes and it seems that I am not allowed any.”

“I would certainly end up forever crying the blues into a
coffee cup in a park for old men playing
chess or silly games of some sort.”

“My body gnaws at me from one side and my spirit gnaws at me from the other.”

“you are
yesterday's
bouquet so sadly
raided”

“That's the way it ends. The thin edge of the wedge.”

“Tell him to seek the stars and he will kill himself with climbing.”

“Are you anti-black?
I'm anti-everything.”

“Existence was not only absurd, it was plain hard work. Think of how many times you put on your underwear in a lifetime. It was appalling, it was disgusting, it was stupid.”

“since some people had told me that I was ugly, I always preferred shade to the sun, darkness to light”

“You don't go on "probably" when love and guns are in hand.”

“You get so alone at times that it just makes sense.”

“I run with the hunted.”

“It will rain all this night and we will sleep transfixed by the dark water as our blood runs through our fragile life.”

“That's your response to everything: drink?"
"No, that's my response to nothing.”