Charles Bukowski Quotes - Page 5

I don't know. It's been terribly hard for me. How do I know you won't do it again?''Nobody is ever quite sure of what they will do. You aren't sure what you might do.
Charles Bukowski
Generally, I decided, it was better to wait, if you had any feeling for the individual. If you hated her right off, it was better to fuck her right off; if you didn't, it was better to wait, then fuck her and hate her later on.
Charles Bukowski
Where did all the women come from? The supply was endless. Each one of them was individual, different. Their pussies were different, their kisses were different, their breasts were different, but no man could drink them all, there were too many of them, crossing their legs, driving men mad. What a feast!
Charles Bukowski
There were no judgments to be made, yet out of necessity one had to select. Beyond good and evil was all right in theory, but to go on living one had to select: some were kinder than others, some were simply more interested in you, and sometimes the outwardly beautiful and inwardly cold were necessary. The kinder ones fucked better, really, and after you were around them a while they seemed beautiful because they were.
Charles Bukowski
You're the most unknown famous man I ever met
Charles Bukowski
There's too much coldness in the world," I told her. "If people would only talk things out together it would help.
Charles Bukowski
Few beautiful women were willing to indicate in public that they belonged to someone. I had known enough women to realize this. I accepted them for what they were and love came hard and very seldom. When it did it was usually for the wrong reasons. One simply became tired of holding back love and let it go because it needed some place to go. Then, usually, there was trouble.
Charles Bukowski
The time came to put Iris Duarte back on the plane.It was a morning flight which made it difficult. I wasused to rising at noon; it was a fine cure for hangoversand would add 5 years to my life. I felt no sadnesswhile driving her to L.A. International. The sex hadbeen fine; there had been laughter. I could hardlyremember a more civilized time, neither of us makingany demands, yet there had been warmth, it had notbeen without feeling, dead meat coupled with deadmeat. I detested that type of swinging, the LosAngeles, Hollywood, Bel Air, Malibu, Laguna Beachkind of sex. Strangers when you meet, strangers whenyou part—a gymnasium of bodies namelesslymasturbating each other. People with no morals oftenconsidered themselves more free, but mostly theylacked the ability to feel or to love. So they becameswingers. The dead fucking the dead. There was nogamble or humor in their game—it was corpsefucking corpse. Morals were restrictive, but they weregrounded on human experience down through thecenturies. Some morals tended to keep peopleslaves in factories, in churches and true to the State.Other morals simply made good sense. It was like agarden filled with poisoned fruit and good fruit. Youhad to know which to pick and eat, which to leavealone.
Charles Bukowski
Her one drink had Cecelia giggling and talking and she was explaining that animals had souls too. Nobody challenged her opinion. It was possible, we knew. What we weren't sure of was if we had any.
Charles Bukowski
A yet women -good women- frightened me because they eventually wanted your soul, and what was left of mine, I wanted to keep. Basically I craved prostitutes, base women, because they were deadly and hard and made no personal demands. Nothing was lost when they left. Yet at the same time I yearned for a gentle, good woman, despite the overwhelming price.
Charles Bukowski
What a woman wants is a reaction. What a man wants is a woman.
Charles Bukowski
you boys can keep your virgins give me hot old women in high heels with asses that forgot to get old.
Charles Bukowski
there is always one woman to save you from another and as that woman saves you she makes ready to destroy
Charles Bukowski
Some people never go crazy. Me, sometimes I'll lie down behind the couch for 3 or 4 days. They'll find me there. It's Cherub, they'll say, and they pour wine down my throat rub my chest sprinkle me with oils. Then, I'll rise with a roar, rant, rage - curse them and the universe as I send them scattering over the lawn. I'll feel much better, sit down to toast and eggs, hum a little tune, Suddenly become as lovable as a pink overfed whale. Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.
Charles Bukowski
I began to feel like a kept man and it felt great.
Charles Bukowski
Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I'm not going to make it, but you laugh inside — remembering all the times you've felt that way.
Charles Bukowski
Do you hate people?”“I don't hate them...I just feel better when they're not around.
Charles Bukowski
if you are going to try, go all the way.. Otherwise, don’t even start.. If you are going to try, go all the way.. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. Go all the way.. It could mean not eating for three or four days.. It could mean freezing on a park bench.. It could mean jail, derision, mockery, isolation.. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test for endurance, of how much you really want to do it.. And you’ll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine.. if you are going to try, go all the way.. there’s no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods and the nights will flame with fire. Do it, do it , do it.. all the way .. all the way.. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It’s the only good fight there is ….
Charles Bukowski
My objection to war was not that I had to kill somebody or be killed senselessly, that hardly mattered. What I objected to was to be denied the right to sit in a small room and starve and drink cheap wine and go crazy in my own way and at my own leisure.
Charles Bukowski
I like to prowl ordinary places.I feel sorry for us all or glad for us allcaught alive togetherand awkward in that way.there's nothing better than the jokeof usthe seriousness of usthe dullness of us
Charles Bukowski
I like to prowl ordinary placesand taste the people-from a distance.
Charles Bukowski
People just weren't interesting. Maybe they weren't supposed to be. But animals, birds, even insects were. I couldn't understand it.
Charles Bukowski
I was alone with myself. And disgusting as I was it was better than being with somebody else, anybody else, all of them out there doing their pitiful little tricks and handsprings.
Charles Bukowski
As a recluse I couldn't bear traffic. It had nothing to do with jealousy, I simply disliked people, crowds, anywhere, except at my readings. People diminished me, they sucked me dry.
Charles Bukowski
I have one problem, I don’t hate people. They disgust me and I want to get away from them. I do not have hatred. I have an escape mechanism.
Charles Bukowski
I love you butdon't know what todo.
Charles Bukowski
There is nothing that teaches you more than regrouping after failure ad moving on. Yet most people are stricken wth fear. They fear failure so much that they fail.
Charles Bukowski
I didn't like anything. Maybe I was afraid. That was it - I was afraid. I wanted to sit alone in a room with the shades down. I feasted upon that. I was a crank. I was a lunatic.
Charles Bukowski
I am too sick to lay downthe sidewalks frighten methe whole damned city frightens me,what I will becomewhat I have becomefrightens me.
Charles Bukowski
I walked around the library looking for books. I pulled them off the shelves, one by one. But they were all tricks. They were very dull. There were pages and pages of words that didn't say anything. Or if they did say something they took too long to say it and by the time they said it you already were too tired to have it matter at all. I tried book after book. Surely, out of all those books, there was one.
Charles Bukowski
I often carry things to read so that I will not have to look at the people.
Charles Bukowski
I could read the great books but the great books don't interest me.
Charles Bukowski
great books are the ones we need
Charles Bukowski
sometimes a man must fight so hard for life that he doesn't have time to live it.
Charles Bukowski
a life can change in a tenth ofa second.or sometimes it can take70years.
Charles Bukowski
the tired sunsets and the tired people - it takes a lifetime to die and no time at all.
Charles Bukowski
Goodness could be found sometimes in the middle of hell.
Charles Bukowski
it's good to have things done withwhen they don't workit's also good not to hateor even forgetthe person you've failed with.
Charles Bukowski
people need me. I fillthem. if they can't see mefor awhile the get desperate, they getsick.but if I see them too oftenI get sick. it's hard to feedwithout getting fed.
Charles Bukowski
Her violence frightened me. She always claimed that I was the jealous one, and I was often jealous, but when I saw things working against me I simply became disgusted and withdrew. Lydia was different. She reacted. She was the Head Cheerleader at the Game of Violence.
Charles Bukowski
I had also read somewhere that if a man didn't truly believe or understand what he was espousing, somehow he could do a more convincing job
Charles Bukowski
For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.
Charles Bukowski
Mëso të mos e shkatërrosh me fjalë atë çfarë ke ndërtuar me heshtje.
Charles Bukowski
If something burns your soul with purpose and desire, it’s your duty to be reduced to ashes by it. Any other form of existence will be yet another dull book in the library of life.
Charles Bukowski
The writer has no responsibility other than to jack off in bed alone and write a good page.
Charles Bukowski
Basically, that's why I wrote: to save my ass, to save my ass from the madhouse, from the streets, from myself.
Charles Bukowski
A good writer knew when not to write. Anybody could type. Not that I was a good typist also I couldn't spell and I didn't know grammar. But I knew when not to write. It was like fucking. You had to rest the godhead now and then.
Charles Bukowski
When I was young I was depressed all the time. But suicide no longer seemed a possibility in my life. At my age there was very little left to kill. It was good to be old, no matter what they said. It was reasonable that a man had to be at least 50 years old before he could write with anything like clarity.
Charles Bukowski
There is a problem with writers. If what a writer wrote was published and sold many, many copies, the writer thought he was great. If what a writer wrote was published and sold a medium number of copies, the writer thought he was great. If what a writer wrote was published and sold very few copies, the writer thought he was great. If what the writer wrote never was published and he didn't have enough the money to publish it himself, then he thought he was truly great. The truth, however, was there was very little greatness. It was almost nonexistent, invisible. But you could be sure that the worst writers had the most confidence, the least self-doubt. Anyway, writers were to be avoided, and I tried to avoid them, but it was almost impossible. They hoped for some sort of brotherhood, some kind of togetherness. None of it had anything to do with writing, none of it helped at the typewriter.
Charles Bukowski
Don’t ever write a novel unless it hurts like a hot turd coming out
Charles Bukowski
There's no way I can stop writing, it's a form of insanity.
Charles Bukowski
not writing is not good but trying to write when you can't is worse.
Charles Bukowski
What is your advice to young writers?""Drink, fuck and smoke plenty of cigarettes.""What is your advice to older writers?""If you're still alive, you don't need any advice.""What is the impulse that makes you create a poem?""What makes you take a shit?
Charles Bukowski
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.
Charles Bukowski
There is only one place to write and that is alone at a typewriter. The writer who has to go into the streets is a writer who does not know the streets. . . when you leave your typewriter you leave your machine gun and the rats come pouring through.
Charles Bukowski
take a writer away from his typewriterand all you have leftisthe sicknesswhich started himtypingin thebeginning
Charles Bukowski
writing about a writer's block is better than not writing at all
Charles Bukowski
nothing can save you except writing. it keeps the walls from failing.
Charles Bukowski
Writing is something that you don't know how to do. You sit down and it's something that happens, or it may not happen. So, how can you teach anybody how to write? It's beyond me, because you yourself don't even know if you're going to be able to. I'm always worried, well, you know, every time I go upstairs with my wine bottle. Sometimes I'll sit at that typewriter for fifteen minutes, you know. I don't go up there to write. The typewriter's up there. If it doesn't start moving, I say, well this could be the night that I hit the dust.
Charles Bukowski
unless the sun inside you is burning your gut, don't do it
Charles Bukowski