Charles Bukowski Quotes

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

“Meanwhile the 3 a. m. drunks of the world would lay in their beds, trying in vain to sleep, and deserving that rest, if they could find it.”

“I will put on my shoes and shirt
and get out of here - it'll
be better for
all of us.”

“and if I have any advice to give to anybody it’s this: take up watercolor painting.”

“I'm going to open another vottle. not a vottle, but a bottle. you open it and I'll drink it. and you try to write as much as I did without falling off of your chair.”

“The world had somehow gone too far, and spontaneous kindness could never be so easy.”

“but as God said,
crossing his legs,
I see where I have made plenty of poets
but not so very much
poetry.”

“we must bring
our own light
to the
darkness.”

“I felt like crying but nothing came out. it was just a sort of sad sickness, sick sad, when you can’t feel any worse. I think you know it. I think everybody knows it now and then. but I think I have known it pretty often, too often.”

“God knows I am not too hippy. Perhaps because I am too much around the hip and I fear fads for, like anybody else, I like something that tends to last.”

“I am sick with caring.”

“Those who preach god, need god
Those who preach peace do not have peace
Those who preach love do not have love”

“Your writing", she said to me, "it's so raw. It's like a sledgehammer, and yet it has humor and tenderness….”

“There's nothing unusual about love.”

“A woman is a full time job. You have to choose your profession.”

“Long ago, among other lies they were taught that silence was bravery.”

“Are there good governments and bad governments? No, there are only bad governments and worse governments.”

“There's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out, but I'm too tough for him.”

“all that I know is that I believe in
the sound of music and the
running of a horse. all else is
squabble.”

“Potential," I said, "doesn't mean a thing. You've got to do it. Almost every baby in a crib has more potential than I have.”

“I found the best thing
I could do
was just to type away
at my own work
and let the dying
die
as they always have.”

“agony sometimes changes
form
but
it never ceases for
anybody.”

“Even the stove and the refrigerator looked human, I mean good human - they seemed to have arms and voices and they said, hang around, kid, it's good here, it can be very good here.”

“Ya got cigarettes?” she asks. “Yes,” I say,
“I got cigarettes.” “Matches?” she asks.
“Enough to burn Rome.” “Whiskey?”
“Enough whiskey for a Mississippi River
of pain.” “You drunk?” “Not yet.”

“There will always be something to ruin our lives. It all depends on what or which finds us first. You’re always ripe and ready to be taken.”

“I would be married, but I'd have no wife, I would be married to a single life.”

“That the young rich smell the stink of the poor and learn to find it a bit amusing. They had to laugh, otherwise it would be too terrifying.”

“Let it die. Let there be a new beginning. It’s awful. Goodnight.”

“where some god pissed a rain of
reason to make things grow
only to die”

“peace of mind and heart
arrives
when we accept what is:
having been
born into this
strange life
we must accept
the wasted gamble of our
days
and take some satisfaction in
the pleasure of
leaving it all
behind.”

“Love is not a candle burning down. Life is. And love and life are not the same or else Love, having choice, nobody would ever die.”

“If you’re going to try, go all the
way.
otherwise, don’t even start.”

“Genius could be the ability to say a profound thing in a simple way, or even to say a simple thing in a simpler way.”

“the courage it took to get out of bed each morning to face the same things over and over was enormous.”

“how can you be true and
kind at the same
time?

how?”

“I'm not dead yet, just in a state of rapid decay, who isn't?”

“it's good to have things done with
when they don't work
it's also good not to hate
or even forget
the person you've failed with.”

“They swallow God without thinking, they swallow country without thinking. Soon they forget how to think, they let others think for them.”

“I guess we often get the deep blues, both of us, and wonder what it all means- the people, the buildings, the day by day things, the waste of time, of ourselves.”

“I decided to stay in bed until noon. Maybe by then half the world would be dead and it would only be half as hard to take.”

“Dying in a a war never stopped wars from happening.”

“I'm only interested in poetry.”

“What's wrong with assholes, baby?”

“The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose, they sliced a little bit more off you, until there was nothing left.”

“The centuries are sprinkled with rare magic
with divine creatures
who help us get past the common and extraordinary ills that beset us”

“Beautiful thoughts, and beautiful women never last.”

“It’s hard to drink when you dance. And it’s hard to dance when you drink.”

“Everything was eternally dreary, dismal, damned. Even the weather was insolent and bitchy.”

“When a writer is swayed with his fame and his fortune, you can float him down the river with the turds.”

“the world is better without
them.

only the plants and the animals are
true comrades.

I drink to them and with
them.”