Source: Women (1978)
Context: 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. They lose their sense of humor. They become nervous, psychotic bores. They even become killers.

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

Charles Bukowski

“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.”

Charles Bukowski

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

Charles Bukowski

“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.”

Charles Bukowski book Tales of Ordinary Madness

Variant: 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.
Source: Tales of Ordinary Madness

“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.”

Charles Bukowski

Source: More Notes of a Dirty Old Man: The Uncollected Columns

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

Charles Bukowski book Women

Source: Women

“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”

Charles Bukowski

Source: You Get So Alone At Times That It Just Makes Sense

“terror finally becomes almost
bearable
but never quite

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

Charles Bukowski book Love Is a Dog from Hell

Source: Love Is a Dog from Hell