Bukowski Charles Quotes & Sayings

Parker had a young white boy with him-one of the neurotic tribe of the lost- and the kid's eyes were filled with wet layers of tears. One big tear in each eye. They did not drop out. It was fascinating. I had seen women sit and look at me with those same eyes before they got mad and started screaming about what a son of a bitch I was. — Charles Bukowski

And I said to myself that he was the first thing that I had ever missed in my life. — Charles Bukowski

Beware the average man the average woman
beware their love, their love is average
seeks average
but there is genius in their hatred
there is enough genius in their hatred to kill you
to kill anybody
not wanting solitude
not understanding solitude
they will attempt to destroy anything
that differs from their own
not being able to create art
they will not understand art
they will consider their failure as creators
only as a failure of the world — Charles Bukowski

Young or old, good or bad, I don't think anything dies as slow and as hard as a writer. — Charles Bukowski

Writers are nothing but beggars with a good line. — Charles Bukowski

That girl enjoyed everything that bored me and everything that I enjoyed bored her. We were the perfect mates: what kept us going was the tolerable and intolerable distance between us. We kept meeting each day - and each night - with nothing solved and no chance to solve it. Perfection. — Charles Bukowski

Drinking is an emotional thing. It joggles you out of the standardism of everyday life, out of everything being the same. It yanks you out of your body and your mind and throws you against the wall. I have the feeling that drinking is a form of suicide where you're allowed to return to life and begin all over the next day. It's like killing yourself, and then you're reborn. I guess I've lived about ten or fifteen thousand lives now. — Charles Bukowski

There is always somebody about to ruin your day, if not your life. — Charles Bukowski

There was something about funerals. It made you see things better. A funeral a day and I'd be rich. — Charles Bukowski

True revolution comes from true revulsion; when things get bad enough the kitten will kill the lion. — Charles Bukowski

Places to hunt
places to hide are
getting harder to find, and pet
canaries and goldfish too, did you notice
that? — Charles Bukowski

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! — Charles Bukowski

I have consumed more drink than the first
one hundred men you will pass
on the street
or meet in the madhouse.
I scratch my belly and dream of the
albatross.
I have joined the great drunks of
the centuries:
Li Po, Toulouse-Lautrec, Crane, Faulkner.
I have been selected
but by whom? — Charles Bukowski

You know the typical crowd, Wow, it's Friday night, what are you going to do? Just sit there? Well, yeah. Because there's nothing out there. It's stupidity. Stupid people mingling with stupid people. Let them stupidify themselves. I've never been bothered with the need to rush out into the night. That's all. Sorry for all the millions, but I've never been lonely. I like myself. I'm the best form of entertainment I have. — Charles Bukowski

The first thing I remember my grandmother saying was, I will bury all of you! — Charles Bukowski

There's no clarity. there was never meant to be clarity. — Charles Bukowski

Dinosauria, we born — Charles Bukowski

They took all the joy out of fucking by talking about it all the time. I liked to fuck too, but it wasn't my religion. — Charles Bukowski

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. — Charles Bukowski

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. — Charles Bukowski

Having nothing to struggle
against
they have nothing to struggle
for. — Charles Bukowski

I'm only interested in poetry. — Charles Bukowski

In my work, as a writer, I only photograph, in words, what I see. — Charles Bukowski

To whom it may concern: please phone me for appointments when you want to see me. I will not answer unsolicited knocks upon the door. I need time to do my work. I will not allow you to murder my work. please understand that what keeps me alive will make me a better person toward and for you when we finally meet under easy and unstrained conditions. — Charles Bukowski

It was a beauty fire, it contained soul, the sides of sunshine mountains, hot streams of smiling fish, warm stockings smelling a bit like toast. I held my hand over the little flame. I had beautiful hands. that one thing I had. I had beautiful hands. — Charles Bukowski

good weather
is like
good women -
it doesn't always happen
and when it does
it doesn't
always last. — Charles Bukowski

I can never drive my car over a bridge without thinking of suicide.
I can never look at a lake or an ocean without thinking of suicide. — Charles Bukowski

You've got to rise from the floor alone or fall back alone. — Charles Bukowski

I wanted the whole world or nothing. — Charles Bukowski

More often than not Democratic Law works to the advantage of the few even though the many have voted; this, of course, is because the few have told them how to vote. — Charles Bukowski

Love is for real men. — Charles Bukowski

It was true that I didn't have much ambition, but there ought to be a place for people without ambition, I mean a better place than the one usually reserved. How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so? — Charles Bukowski

Sundays kill more people than bombs. — Charles Bukowski

I suppose there's always something out there that we want to torture ourselves with. — Charles Bukowski

In my next life I want to be a cat. To sleep 20 hours a day and wait to be fed. To sit around licking my ass. — Charles Bukowski

If I had a book or a drink then I didn't think too much of other things - fools create their own paradise. — Charles Bukowski

And underneath all that, the fish, the poor fish fighting each other, eating each other. We're like those fish, only we're up here. One bad move and you're finished. — Charles Bukowski

I sit here
drunk now.
I am
a series of
small victories
and large defeats
and I am as
amazed
as any other
that
I have gotten
from there to
here
without committing murder
or being
murdered;
without
having ended up in the
madhouse.

as I drink alone
again tonight
my soul despite all the past
agony
thanks all the gods
who were not
there
for me
then. — Charles Bukowski

Dear child, I only did to you
what the sparrow
did to you; I am old when it is
fashionable to be young; I cry when it is
fashionable to laugh.
I hated you when it would have taken less courage to love. — Charles Bukowski

I beg to differ on Charles Bukowski, who says nothing can save you, except writing. Sometimes, absolutely nothing will save you, not the nights you end up wasting waiting for something grand to happen, not the mornings where coffee has no taste and you wake up knowing the day will not be a blast, not the plans and schemes you write down on your imaginary flipchart to make the world go round. You end up stuck, alone and in the disparate points of chaos that drag you down, you have to come up with something to save yourself. Then you make six impossible wishes before breakfast, start walking and working and learn to seize what you call paranormal activity when it comes true. — Ioana-Cristina Casapu

New affairs were exciting but they
were also hard work. The first kiss, the first fuck had some drama. People were interesting at first. Then later, slowly but surely, all the flaws and madness would manifest themselves. I would become less and less to them; they would mean less and less to me. — Charles Bukowski

In that drunken place you would like to hand your heart to her and say touch it but then give it back. — Charles Bukowski

A man needed somebody. There wasn't anybody around, so you had to make up somebody, make him up to be like a man should be. It wasn't make-believe or cheating. The other way was make-believe and cheating: living your life without a man like him around. — Charles Bukowski

I am with the roots
of flowers
entwined, entombed
sending up my passionate blossoms
as a flight of rockets
and argument;
wine churls my throat,
above me
feet walk upon my brain, monkies fall from the sky
clutching photographs
of the planets,
but i seek only music
and the leisure
of my pain — Charles Bukowski

We use such big words to move nowhere. — Charles Bukowski

The world is full of boring, identical and mindless people. — Charles Bukowski

I had noticed that both in the very poor and very rich extremes of society the mad were often allowed to mingle freely. — Charles Bukowski

Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit. — Charles Bukowski

I went over to see Marina two or three or four times a week. I knew as long as I could see the girl I would be all right ... . Soon after, I got a letter from Fay. She and the child were living in a hippie commune in New Mexico. It was a nice place, she said. Marina would be able to breathe there. She enclosed a little drawing the girl had made for me. — Charles Bukowski

Before, they wouldn't speak to each other. Now they were mobilized. The Tribe was in danger. — Charles Bukowski

When you clean up a city, you destroy it. — Charles Bukowski

She is no longer
the beautiful woman
she was. she sends
photos of herself
sitting upon a rock
by the ocean
alone and damned.
I could have had
her once. I wonder
if she thinks I
could have
saved her? — Charles Bukowski

What's genius? I don't know but I do know that the difference between a madman and a professional is that a pro does as well as he can within what
he has set out to do and a madman does exceptionally well at what he can't help doing. — Charles Bukowski

There still might be a place for us somewhere. — Charles Bukowski

I tried some more. It was tasting better. I was feeling better. "This stuff belongs to your father, Baldy. I shouldn't drink it all." "He doesn't care. He's stopped drinking." Never had I felt so good. It was better than masturbating. I went from barrel to barrel. It was magic. Why hadn't someone told me? With this, life was great, a man was perfect, nothing could touch him. I stood up straight and looked at Baldy. "Where's your mother? I'm going to fuck your mother! — Charles Bukowski

A dry period for me means perhaps going two or three nights without writing. I probably have dry periods but I'm not aware of them and I go on writing, only the writing probably isn't much good. — Charles Bukowski

A cat is only itself, representative of the strong forces of life that won't let go. — Charles Bukowski

Then I take a dump. Feel better. Take off my clothes and step into the pool. Ice water. But great. I walk along toward the deep end of the pool, the water rising inch by inch, chilling me. Then I plunge below the water. It's restful. The world doesn't know where I am. I come up, swim to the far edge, find the ledge, sit there. It must be about the 9th or 10th race. The horses are still running. I plunge again into the water, being aware of my stupid whiteness, of my age hanging onto me like a leech. Still, it's OK. I should have been dead 40 years ago. I rise to the top, swim to the far edge, get out. — Charles Bukowski

You think of killing him
on the spot
but discard that thought and
leave,
down into the urine-stinking
elevator,
they have you crucified too,
America at work,
where they rip out your intestines
and your brain and your
will and your spirit.
They suck you dry, then throw
you away.
The capitalist system.
The work ethic.
The profit motive.
The memory of your father's words,
"work hard and you'll be
appreciated."
of course, only if you make
much more for them than they pay
you. — Charles Bukowski

We are
Born like this
Into this
Into these carefully mad wars
Into the sight of broken factory windows of emptiness
Into bars where people no longer speak to each other
Into fist fights that end as shootings and knifings
Born into this
Into hospitals which are so expensive that it's cheaper to die
Into lawyers who charge so much it's cheaper to plead guilty
Into a country where the jails are full and the madhouses closed
Into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes — Charles Bukowski

Sometimes you make a mistake, taking the wrong poem more often I make the mistake, writing it. — 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

Death is not the problem; waiting around for it is. — Charles Bukowski

Animals are inspirational. They don't know how to lie. They are natural forces. — Charles Bukowski

Jan was an excellent fuck ... she had a tight pussy and she took it like it was a knife that was killing her. — Charles Bukowski

My dear,
Find what you love and let it kill you.
Let it drain you of your all. Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness.
Let it kill you and let it devour your remains.
For all things will kill you, both slowly and fastly, but it's much better to be killed by a lover.
~ Falsely yours — Charles Bukowski

I walk into the kitchen, look at the typer down there on the floor. It's a dirty floor. It's a dirty typer that types dirty stories — Charles Bukowski

Look, you're small-town. I've had over 50 jobs, maybe a hundred. I've never stayed anywhere long. What I am trying to say is, there is a certain game played in offices all over America. The people are bored, they don't know what to do, so they play the office-romance game. Most of the time it means nothing but the passing of time. Sometimes they do manage to work off a screw or two on the side. But even then, it is just an offhand pasttime, like bowling or t.v. or a New Year's Eve party. You've got to understand that it doesn't mean anything and then you won't get hurt. Do you understand what I mean?"
I think that Mr. Partisan is sincere."
You're going to get stuck with that pin, babe, don't forget what I told you. Watch those slicks. They are as phony as a lead dime. — Charles Bukowski

Ambition rarely has anything to do with talent. Luck is best, and talent limps along a little bit behind luck. — Charles Bukowski

I get 75 letters a month. If i answered them that's all I would ever do. — Charles Bukowski

That boy was ready for his life to come, he would undoubtedly be highly successful, the lying little prick. — Charles Bukowski

I reached over, opened it in the middle, and began reading Tolstoy's War and Peace. Nothing had changed. It was still a lousy book. — Charles Bukowski

There is a quality about women who choose
men sparingly;
it appears in their walk
in their eyes
in their laughter and in their
gentle hearts. — Charles Bukowski

Lighting new cigarettes,
pouring more
drinks.
It has been a beautiful
fight.
Still
is. — Charles Bukowski

You can forgive a fool because he only runs in one direction and doesn't deceive anybody. It's the deceivers who make you feel bad. — Charles Bukowski

Long before I became 'rich and famous' I just sat round drinking wine and staring at the walls. — Charles Bukowski

A complete subnormal idiot. A good guy. wait until the fog came in some night and they sent him back to his lonely closed for a hand job. — Charles Bukowski

But right now it's Bob Dylan Bob Dylan Bob Dylan all the way. — Charles Bukowski

People need me. I fill them. If they can't see me for a while they get desperate, they get sick. But if I see them too often I get sick. It's hard to feed without getting fed. — Charles Bukowski

I have seen dogs with more style than men,
although not many dogs have style.
Cats have it with abundance. — Charles Bukowski

Alcohol is probably one of the greatest things to arrive upon the earth - alongside of me. — Charles Bukowski

What a weary time those years were
to have the desire and the need to live but not the ability. — Charles Bukowski

If I stop writing I am dead. And that's the only way I'll stop: dead. — Charles Bukowski

I used to lay drunk in alleys and I probably will again.Bukowski, who is he? I read about Bukowski and it doesn't seem like anything to do with me. — Charles Bukowski

There is a blue bird in my heart that wants to get out. — Charles Bukowski

One doesn't even think of
the liver
and if the liver
doesn't think of
us, that's
fine. — Charles Bukowski

No matter how little a man has he will find that he will always settle for less. — Charles Bukowski

And remember the old dogs
who fought so well:
Hemingway, Celine, Dostoevsky, Hamsun.
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.
drink more beer.
there's time.
and if there's not
that's all right
too. — Charles Bukowski

Most poets are young simply because they have not been caught up. Show me an old poet, and I'll show you, more often than not, either a madman or a master ... it's when you begin to lie to yourself in a poem in order simply to make a poem that you fail. That is why I do not rework poems. — Charles Bukowski

There was no sense to life, to the structure of things. D.H. Lawrence had known that. You needed love, but not the kind of love most people used and were used up by. Old D.H. had known something. His buddy Huxley was just an intellectual fidget, but what a marvelous one. Better than G.B. Shaw with that hard keel of a mind always scraping bottom, his labored wit finally only a task, a burden on himself, preventing him from really feeling anything, his brilliant speech finally a bore, scraping the mind and the sensibilities. It was good to read them all though. It made you realize that thoughts and words could be fascinating, if finally useless. — Charles Bukowski

We do not abandon ship. I say, as corny as it may sound, through the strength and spirit and fire and dare and gamble of a few men in a few ways we can save the carcass of humanity from drowning. No light goes out until it goes out. Let's fight as men, not rats. Period. No further addition. — Charles Bukowski

it's so easy to be a poet
and so hard to be
a man. — Charles Bukowski

This is very important
to take leisure time. Pace is the essence. Without stopping entirely and doing nothing at all for great periods, you're gonna lose everything ... just to do nothing at all, very, very important. And how many people do this in modern society? Very few. That's why they're all totally mad, frustrated, angry and hateful. — Charles Bukowski

I'm fucking the grave, I thought, I'm bringing the dead back to life ... — Charles Bukowski

It's just that the grape has me down. — Charles Bukowski

(You can shoot a barracuda between the eyes and it won't go to hell because it doesn't know where or what hell is ... ) — Charles Bukowski

Well, as the boys said, you had to work somewhere. So they accepted what there was. This was the wisdom of the slave. — Charles Bukowski

Human relationships didn't work anyhow. Only the first two weeks had any zing, then the participants lost their interest. Masks dropped away and real people began to appear: cranks, imbeciles, the demented, the vengeful, sadists, killers. Modern society had created its own kind and they feasted on each other. It was a duel to the death
in a cesspool. — Charles Bukowski

A. Huxley died at 69, much too early for such a fierce talent, and I read all his works but actually Point Counter Point did help a bit in carrying me through the factories and the drunk tanks and the unsavory ladies. that book along with Hamsun's Hunger they helped a bit. great books are the ones we need. — Charles Bukowski

I have lost my rhythm.
I can't sleep.
I can't eat.
I have been robbed of
my filth. — Charles Bukowski