Charles Bukowski Quotes

Yes?’ he asked, looking at me over the sheet.‘I’m a writer temporarily down on my inspirations.’‘Oh, a writer, eh?’‘Yes.’‘Are you sure?’‘No, I’m not.’‘What do you write?’‘Short stories mostly. And I’m halfway through a novel.’‘A novel, eh?’‘Yes.’‘What’s the name of it?’‘”The Leaky Faucet of My Doom.”‘‘Oh, I like that. What’s it about?’‘Everything.’‘Everything? You mean, for instance, it’s about cancer?’‘Yes.’‘How about my wife?’‘She’s in there too.
Charles Bukowski
the rent is a little higher herebut so far I've been able to pay itand that's a miracle toolike still maybe being sanewhile thinking of guns and sidewalksand old ladies in libraries.
Charles Bukowski
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.
Charles Bukowski
it doesn't matter if Prince Charles falls off his horseor that the hummingbird is so seldomseenor that we are too senseless to goinsane.coffee. give us more of that NOTHINGcoffee.
Charles Bukowski
There is nothing worse than being broke and having your woman leave you. Nothing to drink, no job,just the walls, sitting there staring at the walls and thinking. That's how women got back at you, but it hurt and weakened them too. Or so I like to believe.
Charles Bukowski
I felt I had to win. It seemed very important. I didn't know why it was important and I kept thinking, why do I think this is so important? And another part of me answered, just because it is.
Charles Bukowski
Don't you go to the movies?""Mostly just to eat popcorn in the dark.
Charles Bukowski
It's like a movie, I thought, like a fucking movie. It seemed funny to me. It felt as if we were on camera. I liked it. It was better than the racetrack, it was better than the boxing matches. We kept drinking.
Charles Bukowski
of one hundred movies there's one that is fair, one that's good and ninety eight that are very bad. most movies start badly and steadily get worse
Charles Bukowski
I am sick with caring.
Charles Bukowski
from the beginning, through themiddle years and up to theend:too bad, too bad, too bad.
Charles Bukowski
I guess the only time most people think about injustice is when it happens to them.
Charles Bukowski
people see so many movies that when they finally see one not so bad as the others, they think it's great. an Academy Award means that you don't stink quite as much as your cousin.
Charles Bukowski
If you can hit a guy once, you can hit him twice.
Charles Bukowski
Endurance is more important than truth because without endurance there can't be any truth. And truth means going to the end like you mean it. That way, death itself comes up short when it grabs
Charles Bukowski
Her eyes always had a frantic, lost look. He could never cure her eyes of that.
Charles Bukowski
The street to my left was backed up with traffic and I watched the people waiting patiently in the cars. There was almost always a man and a women, staring straight ahead, not talking. It was, finally, for everyone, a matter of waiting. You waited and you waited- for the hospital, the doctor, the plumber, the madhouse, the jail, papa death himself. First the signal red, then the signal was green. The citizens of the world ate food and watched t.v. and worried about their jobs or lack of the same, while they waited.
Charles Bukowski
Frankly, I was horrified by life, at what a man had to do simply in order to eat, sleep, and keep himself clothed. So I stayed in bed and drank. When you drank the world was still out there, but for the moment it didn't have you by the throat.
Charles Bukowski
Getting drunk was good. I decided that I would always like getting drunk. It took away the obvious and maybe. If you could get away from the obvious often enough, you wouldn't become obvious yourself.
Charles Bukowski
I needed a vacation. I needed 5 women. I needed to get the wax out of my ears. My car needed an oil change. I'd failed to file my damned income tax. One of the stems had broken off of my reading glasses. There were ants in my apartment. I needed to get my teeth cleaned. My shoes were run down at the heels. I had insomnia. My auto insurance had expired. I cut myself every time i shaved. I hadn't laughed in 6 years. I tended to worry when there was nothing to worry about. And when there was something to worry about, i got drunk.
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
I like to change liquor stores frequently because the clerks got to know your habits if you went in night and day and bought huge quantities. I could feel them wondering why I wasn't dead yet and it made me uncomfortable. They probably weren't thinking any such thing, but then a man gets paranoid when he has 300 hangovers a year.
Charles Bukowski
So where do you go? Back to the bottle And back to a tiny room somewhere. And wait. And wait, and wait. That's all.
Charles Bukowski
Like anybody can tell you, I am not a very nice man. I don't know the word. I have always admired the villain, the outlaw, the son of a bitch. I don't like the clean-shaven boy with the necktie and the good job. I like desperate men, men with broken teeth and broken minds and broken ways. They interest me. They are full of surprises and explosions. I also like vile women, drunk cursing bitches with loose stockings and sloppy mascara faces. I'm more interested in perverts than saints. I can relax with bums because I am a bum. I don't like laws, morals, religions, rules. I don't like to be shaped by society.
Charles Bukowski
I had never been a dresser. My shirts were all faded and shrunken, 5 or 6 years old, threadbare. My pants the same. I hated department stores, I hated the clerks, they acted so superior, they seemed to know the secret of life, they had a confidence I didn't possess. My shoes were always broken down and old, I disliked shoe stores too. I never purchased anything until it was completely unusable, and that included automobiles. It wasn't a matter of thrift, I just couldn't bear to be a buyer needing a seller, seller being so handsome and aloof and superior. Besides, it all took time, time when you could just be laying around and drinking.
Charles Bukowski
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.
Charles Bukowski
That's the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.
Charles Bukowski
I think I need a drink.''Almost everybody does only they don't know it.
Charles Bukowski
The secret is writing down one simple line after another.
Charles Bukowski
there's a bluebird in my heart thatwants to get outbut I'm too clever, I only let him outat night sometimeswhen everybody's asleep.I say, I know that you're there,so don't besad.then I put him back,but he's singing a littlein there, I haven't quite let himdieand we sleep together likethatwith oursecret pactand it's nice enough tomake a manweep, but I don'tweep, doyou?
Charles Bukowski
I was so thin I could slice bread with my shoulderblades, only I seldom had bread
Charles Bukowski
There is always somebody about to ruin your day, if not your life.
Charles Bukowski
First paycheck I get, I thought, I'm going to get myself a room near the downtown L.A. Public Library.
Charles Bukowski
peace of mind and heartarriveswhen we accept what is:having beenborn into thisstrange lifewe must acceptthe wasted gamble of ourdaysand take some satisfaction inthe pleasure ofleaving it allbehind.
Charles Bukowski
Never bring a lot of money to where a poor man lives. He can only lose what little he has. On the other hand it is mathematically possible that he might win whatever you bring with you. What you must do, with money and the poor, is never let them get too close to one another.
Charles Bukowski
I've learned to feel good when I feel good.it's better to be driven around in a red porschethan to ownone. the luck of the fool is inviolate.
Charles Bukowski
Some people never go crazy, what truly horrible lives they must live.
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
Belane, are you nuts?"Who knows? Insanity is comparative. Who sets the norm?
Charles Bukowski
Hell, I'd even failed with women. Three wives. Nothing really wrong each time. It all got destroyed by petty bickering. Railing about nothing. Getting pissed-off over anything and everything. Day by day, year by year, grinding. Instead of helping each other you just sliced away, picked at this or that. Goading. Endless goading. It became a cheap contest. And once you got into it, it became habitual. You couldn't seem to get out. You almost didn't want to get out. And then you did get out. All the way.
Charles Bukowski
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.
Charles Bukowski
The Genius Of The Crowdthere is enough treachery, hatred violence absurdity in the averagehuman being to supply any given army on any given dayand the best at murder are those who preach against itand the best at hate are those who preach loveand the best at war finally are those who preach peacethose who preach god, need godthose who preach peace do not have peacethose who preach peace do not have lovebeware the preachersbeware the knowersbeware those who are always reading booksbeware those who either detest povertyor are proud of itbeware those quick to praisefor they need praise in returnbeware those who are quick to censorthey are afraid of what they do not knowbeware those who seek constant crowds forthey are nothing alonebeware the average man the average womanbeware their love, their love is averageseeks averagebut there is genius in their hatredthere is enough genius in their hatred to kill youto kill anybodynot wanting solitudenot understanding solitudethey will attempt to destroy anythingthat differs from their ownnot being able to create artthey will not understand artthey will consider their failure as creatorsonly as a failure of the worldnot being able to love fullythey will believe your love incompleteand then they will hate youand their hatred will be perfectlike a shining diamondlike a knifelike a mountainlike a tigerlike hemlocktheir finest art
Charles Bukowski
But then if you lied to a man about his talent just because he was sitting across from you, that was the most unforgivable lie of them all, because that was telling him to go on, to continue which was the worst way for a man without real talent to waste his life, finally. But many people did just that, friends and relatives mostly.
Charles Bukowski
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.
Charles Bukowski
The cat is the beautiful devil.
Charles Bukowski
to ask them to legalize pot is something like asking them to put butter on the handcuffs before they place them on you, something else is hurting you - that's why you need pot or whiskey, or whips and rubber suits, or screaming music turned so fucking loud you can't think, or madhouses or mechanical cunts or 162 baseball games in a season. or vietnam or israel or the fear of spiders. your love washing her yellow false teeth in the sink before you screw.
Charles Bukowski
I kept telling myself that all the women in the world weren´t whores, just mine.
Charles Bukowski
I was like a turd that drew flies instead of like a flower that butterflies and bees desired. I wanted to live alone,I felt best being alone, cleaner,,,
Charles Bukowski
Human relationships were strange. I mean, you were with one person a while, eating and sleeping and living with them, loving them, talking to them, going places together, and then it stopped. Then there was a short period when you weren't with anybody, then another woman arrived, and you ate with her and fucked her, and it all seemed so normal, as if you had been waiting just for her and she had been waiting for you. I never felt right being alone; sometimes it felt good but it never felt right.
Charles Bukowski
you've got to know when to let a woman go if you want to keep her,and if you don't want to keep her you let her go anyhow so it's always a process of letting go, one way or the other.
Charles Bukowski
Isolation is a gift. Everything else is just a test of your endurance. You will be alone with the Gods. Your nights will flame with fire.
Charles Bukowski
DEATH COMES SLOWLY LIKE ANTS TO A FALLEN FIG
Charles Bukowski
sleeping in the rain helps me forget things like I am going todie and you are going to die and the cats are going to diebut it's still good to stretch out and know you have arms andfeet and a head, hands, all the parts, even eyes to closeoncemore, it really helps to know these things, to know youradvantagesand your limitations, but why do the cats have to die, Ithink that theworld should be full of cats and full of rain, that's all, justcats andrain, rain and cats, very nice, goodnight.
Charles Bukowski
The factories, the jails, the drunken days and nights, the hospitals have weakened and shaken me like a mouse in the mouth of a hip-cat: life.- from an Aug. 1965 letter to Jim Roman "On Cats
Charles Bukowski
The cat is the beutiful devil. And here we can use the word, even without the “a.”- from a Dec. 21 1960, a letter to Sheri Martinelli"On Cats
Charles Bukowski
I felt like a still live fish on ice in a butcher’s counter on Friday morning.- On Cats
Charles Bukowski
Having a bunch of cats around is good. If you're feeling bad, just look at the cats, you'll feel better, because they know that everything is, just as it is.
Charles Bukowski
I am sad for the dead and I am sad for the livingbut not for my 5 cats
Charles Bukowski
Cats tell me without effort all that there is to know.
Charles Bukowski
for meobedience to another is the decay of self.for though every being is similareach being is differentand to herd our differencesunder one lawdegrades each self.
Charles Bukowski