Charles Bukowski Quotes|Quotes said by Charles Bukowski

• Charles Bukowski Quote #1

  (the whole world is at the
  throat of the world,
  everybody feels angry,
  short-changed, cheated,
  everybody is despondent,
  disillusioned.)
  
  I welcomed shots of
  peace, tattered shards of
  happiness.

• Charles Bukowski Quote #2

  ...wszystko jest strata czasu, chyba ze czlowiek pieprzy sie w najlepsze, tworzy w najlepsze, ma sie jak najlepiej albo zmierza w kierunku uludy pod tytulem milosc i szczescie. Wszyscy konczymy w gnojówce porazki - czy nazwiemy to smiercia czy bledem.

• Charles Bukowski Quote #3

  A cat is only itself.

• Charles Bukowski Quote #4

  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 Quote #5

  a life can change in a tenth of
  a second.
  or sometimes it can take
  70
  years.

• Charles Bukowski Quote #6

  A woman is a full time job. You have to choose your profession.

• Charles Bukowski Quote #7

  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 Quote #8

  After dinner or lunch or whatever it was -- with my crazy 12-hour night I was no longer sure what was what -- I said, Look, baby, I'm sorry, but don't you realize that this job is driving me crazy? Look, let's give it up. Let's just lay around and make love and take walks and talk a little. Let's go to the zoo. Let's look at animals. Let's drive down and look at the ocean. It's only 45 minutes. Let's play games in the arcades. Let's go to the races, the Art Museum, the boxing matches. Let's have friends. Let's laugh. This kind of life like everybody else's kind of life: it's killing us.

• Charles Bukowski Quote #9

  all people start to
  come apart finally
  and there it is:
  just empty ashtrays in a room
  or wisps of hair on a comb
  in the dissolving moonlight.

• Charles Bukowski Quote #10

  all theories
  like cliches
  shot to hell,
  all these small faces
  looking up
  beautiful and believing;
  I wish to weep
  but sorrow is
  stupid.
  I wish to believe but believe is a
  graveyard.
  we have narrowed it down to
  the butcherknife and the
  mockingbird
  wish us
  luck.

• Charles Bukowski Quote #11

  All we do is sleep, and eat and lay around and make love. We're like slugs. Slug-love, I call it.

• Charles Bukowski Quote #12

  alone with everybody
  
  
  the flesh covers the bone
  and they put a mind
  in there and
  sometimes a soul,
  and the women break
  vases against the walls
  and them men drink too
  much
  and nobody finds the
  one
  but they keep
  looking
  crawling in and out
  of beds.
  flesh covers
  the bone and the
  flesh searches
  for more than
  flesh.
  
  there's no chance
  at all:
  we are all trapped
  by a singular
  fate.
  
  nobody ever finds
  the one.
  
  the city dumps fill
  the junkyards fill
  the madhouses fill
  the hospitals fill
  the graveyards fill
  
  nothing else
  fills.

• Charles Bukowski Quote #13

  And it seems people should not build houses anymore
  it seems people should stop working and sit in small rooms on second floors
  under electric lights
  without shades;
  it seems there is a lot to forget
  and a lot not to do
  and in drugstores, markets, bars,
  the people are tired, they do not want to move, and I stand there at night
  and look through this house and the house does not want to be built

• Charles Bukowski Quote #14

  and love is a word used
  too much and
  much
  too soon.

• Charles Bukowski Quote #15

  and our few good times will be rare because we have the critical sense
  and are not easy to fool with laughter

• Charles Bukowski Quote #16

  and when love came to us twice
  and lied to us twice
  we decided to never love again
  that was fair
  fair to us
  and fair to love itself.
  
  we ask for no mercy or no
  miracles;
  we are strong enough to live
  and to die and to
  kill flies,
  
  attend the boxing matches, go to the racetrack,
  live on luck and skill,
  get alone, get alone often,
  and if you can't sleep alone
  be careful of the words you speak in your sleep;
  and
  ask for no mercy
  no miracles;
  
  and don't forget:
  time is meant to be wasted,
  love fails
  and death is useless.

• Charles Bukowski Quote #17

  Animals are inspirational. They don’t know how to lie. They are natural forces.

• Charles Bukowski Quote #18

  animals never worry about Heaven or Hell. neither do I. maybe that's why we get along

• Charles Bukowski Quote #19

  Any damn fool can beg up some kind of job; it takes a wise man to make it without working.

• Charles Bukowski Quote #20

  Anything, anything to stop drowning in this dull, trivial and cowardly existence.

• Charles Bukowski Quote #21

  Are there good governments and bad governments? No, there are only bad governments and worse governments.

• Charles Bukowski Quote #22

  Are you anti-black?
  I'm anti-everything.

• Charles Bukowski Quote #23

  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 Quote #24

  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 Quote #25

  as long as there are
  human beings about
  there is never going to be
  any peace
  for any individual
  upon this earth (or
  anywhere else
  they might
  escape to).
  
  all you can do
  is maybe grab
  ten lucky minutes
  here
  or maybe an hour
  there.
  
  something
  is working toward you
  right now, and
  I mean you
  and nobody but
  you.

• Charles Bukowski Quote #26

  as the shadows assume
  shapes
  I fight the slow
  retreat
  
  now
  my once-promise
  dwindling
  dwindling
  
  now
  lighting new cigarettes
  pouring more
  drinks
  
  it has been a beautiful
  fight
  
  still
  is.

• Charles Bukowski Quote #27

  Basically, that's why I wrote: to save my ass, to save my ass from the madhouse, from the streets, from myself.

• Charles Bukowski Quote #28

  be it peace or happiness
  let it enfold you

• Charles Bukowski Quote #29

  Beasts bounding through time.
  
  Van Gogh writing his brother for paints
  Hemingway testing his shotgun
  Celine going broke as a doctor of medicine
  the impossibility of being human
  Villon expelled from Paris for being a thief
  Faulkner drunk in the gutters of his town
  the impossibility of being human
  Burroughs killing his wife with a gun
  Mailer stabbing his
  the impossibility of being human
  Maupassant going mad in a rowboat
  Dostoevsky lined up against a wall to be shot
  Crane off the back of a boat into the propeller
  the impossibility
  Sylvia with her head in the oven like a baked potato
  Harry Crosby leaping into that Black Sun
  Lorca murdered in the road by the Spanish troops
  the impossibility
  Artaud sitting on a madhouse bench
  Chatterton drinking rat poison
  Shakespeare a plagiarist
  Beethoven with a horn stuck into his head against deafness
  the impossibility the impossibility
  Nietzsche gone totally mad
  the impossibility of being human
  all too human
  this breathing
  in and out
  out and in
  these punks
  these cowards
  these champions
  these mad dogs of glory
  
  moving this little bit of light toward
  us
  impossibly

• Charles Bukowski Quote #30

  Belane, are you nuts?
  Who knows? Insanity is comparative. Who sets the norm?