Charles Bukowski: Thing

“there are worse things
than being alone
but it often takes
decades to realize this
and most often when you do
it's too late
and there's nothing worse
than too late”

“she was consumed by 3 simple things:
drink, despair, loneliness; and 2 more:
youth and beauty”

“Understand me. I’m not like an ordinary world. I have my madness, I live in another dimension and I do not have time for things that have no soul.”

“I want to
let her know
though
that all the nights
sleeping
beside her

even the useless
arguments
were things
ever splendid

and the hard
words
I ever feared to
say
can now be
said:

I love
you.”

“well, i don't know about you but I'm going to try everything! War, women, travel, marriage, children, the works. […]. I want to know about things, what makes them work!”

“An intellectual is a man who says a simple thing in a difficult way; an artist is a man who says a difficult thing in a simple way.”

“I often carry things to read
so that I will not have to look at
the people.”

“Things get bad for all of us, almost continually, and what we do under the constant stress reveals who/what we are.”

“People are strange: They are constantly angered by trivial things, but on a major matter like totally wasting their lives, they hardly seem to notice.”

“It was a joy! Words weren't dull, words were things that could make your mind hum. If you read them and let yourself feel the magic, you could live without pain, with hope, no matter what happened to you.”

“they thought I had guts
they were wrong
I was only frightened of
more important things”

“the writing of some
men
is like a vast bridge
that carries you
over
the many things
that claw and tear.

The Wine of Forever”

“There are only two things wrong with money: too much or too little.”

“The best thing about the bedroom was the bed. I liked to stay in bed for hours, even during the day with covers pulled up to my chin. It was good in there, nothing ever occurred in there, no people, nothing.”

“To do a dull thing with style-now that's what I call art.”

“the worst thing," he told me,
"is bitterness, people end up so
bitter.”

“Sometimes a man doesn’t know what to do about things and sometimes it’s best to lie very still and try not to think at all about anything.”

“True revolution comes from true revulsion; when things get bad enough the kitten will kill the lion.”

“They laughed. Things were funny. They weren't afraid to care. There was no sense to life, to the structure of things.”