Charles Bukowski Quotes

there's no defense
except all the errors
made ~ Charles Bukowski

If we can laugh, fine. And if we've got to cry, we've got to cry. ~ Charles Bukowski

Somebody at one of these places asked me: "What do you do? How do you write, create?" You don't, I told them. You "don't try". That's very important: not to try, either for Cadillacs, creation or immortality. You wait, and if nothing happens, you wait some more. It's like a bug high on the wall. You wait for it to come to you. When it gets close enough you reach out, slap out and kill it. Or if you like it's looks, you make a pet out of it. ~ Charles Bukowski

The parents of rich kids tended to be more patriotic because they had more to lose if the country went under. ~ Charles Bukowski

What good are you? What can you do? It has cost me a thousands of dollars to raise you, feed you, clothe you!
Suppose I left you here on the street? Then what would you do?" "Catch butterflies ~ Charles Bukowski

Anything is a waste of time unless you are fucking well or creating well or getting well or looming toward a kind of phantom-love-happiness. ~ Charles Bukowski

nothing like a hot bath in a cold world ~ Charles Bukowski

The laughter of the mutilated who still need love, and her blessed eyes run deep into her head like mountain springs far in and cool and good. ~ Charles Bukowski

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 ~ Charles Bukowski

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

Don't wait for the good woman. She doesn't exist. ~ Charles Bukowski

I went to the bathroom and threw some water on my face, combed my hair. If I could only comb that face, I thought, but I can't. ~ Charles Bukowski

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

The masses are everywhere they know how to do things: they have sane and deadly angers for sane and deadly things. ~ Charles Bukowski

The idea, of course, might be to let them know that writing needn't be hard work; the hard work is getting out of bed in the morning or at noon; the hard work is looking at people's faces in long supermarket lines; the hard work is working for somebody else who is making money using your life's hours and years. ~ Charles Bukowski

There is a place in the heart that
will never be filled
a space
and even during the
best moments
and
the greatest times
times
we will know it
we will know it
more than
ever
there is a place in the heart that
will never be filled
and
we will wait
and
wait
in that space. ~ Charles Bukowski

it was going to be all right.
at last.
for a while. ~ Charles Bukowski

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. ~ Charles Bukowski

"she' mad but she'
magic. there' no lie in her fire. ~ Charles Bukowski

god, love is more strange than numerals more strange than grass on fire more strange than the dead body of a child drowned in the bottom of a tub, we know so little, we know so much, we don't know enough. ~ Charles Bukowski

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

Suicide fails as you get older:
there's less and less to kill. ~ Charles Bukowski

2 p.m. beer
nothing matters
but flopping on a mattress
with cheap dreams and a beer
as the leaves die and the horses die
and the landladies stare in the halls;
brisk the music of pulled shades,
a last man's cave
in an eternity of swarm
and explosion;
nothing but the dripping sink,
the empty bottle,
euphoria,
youth fenced in,
stabbed and shaven,
taught words
propped up
to die. ~ Charles Bukowski

She says Thomas drank himself to death because he felt his talent was waning. Bullshit. Thomas drank himself to death for the same reason that I do: he loved his drink, it lifted him where he belonged, where we all belong, where we all should be if the stream of people weren't such asses and didn't believe in homes and new cars and all that junk. ~ Charles Bukowski

The Genius Of The Crowd

there is enough treachery, hatred violence absurdity in the average
human being to supply any given army on any given day

and the best at murder are those who preach against it
and the best at hate are those who preach love
and the best at war finally are those who preach peace

those who preach god, need god
those who preach peace do not have peace
those who preach peace do not have love

beware the preachers
beware the knowers
beware those who are always reading books
beware those who either detest poverty
or are proud of it
beware those quick to praise
for they need praise in return
beware those who are quick to censor
they are afraid of what they do not know
beware those who seek constant crowds for
they are nothing alone
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
not being able to love fully
they will believe your love incomplete
and then they wil ~ Charles Bukowski

But that's the trouble with a drunk: if he gets excited he drinks too much, if he gets bored he drinks too much, if he has good luck he drinks too much, if he has bad luck he drinks too much, and so on. ~ Charles Bukowski

a poem is a city burning ~ Charles Bukowski

I began counting each fool that passed me. I got up to 50 in two-and-one-half-minutes, then stepped into the next bar. ~ Charles Bukowski

Love needs too much help, he said.
hate takes care of itself. ~ Charles Bukowski

When I'm drinking around people, I tend to get silly or pugnacious or wild, which can cause problems. ~ 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

She wasn't very
interesting
but few people
are. ~ Charles Bukowski

Cecelia sat and watched us drink. I could see that I repulsed her. I ate meat. I had no god. I liked to fuck. Nature didn't
interest me. I never voted. I liked wars. Outer space bored me. Baseball bored me. History bored me. Zoos bored me. ~ Charles Bukowski

Look, the reason is security, a subconscious need for security. I had a rotten childhood. Two bottles at once fills a void that needs filling. Maybe. I'm not sure. ~ Charles Bukowski

Life is Tuesday afternoon in a cage. ~ Charles Bukowski

Somebody once asked me what my theory of life was, and I said, 'Don't try.' That fits the writing, too. I don't try; I just type. ~ Charles Bukowski

after you've pulled off the tablecloth with
the full plates of food
and broken the windows
and rung the bells of
idiots
and have
spoken true and terrible
words
and have
chased the mob through the
doorway-
then comes the great and
peaceful moment: sitting alone
and
pouring that quiet drink.

the world is better without
them.

only the plants and the animals are
true comrades.

I drink to them and with
them.

they wait as I fill their
glasses. ~ Charles Bukowski

the gods seldom
give
but so quickly
take. ~ Charles Bukowski

I am bitter sometimes but the taste has often been sweet. ~ Charles Bukowski

And when Tolstoy found God his lines went limp, and Turgenev on his deathbed grieved for him because although Tolstoy had given up his land and his coppers for God, he had also given up something else. And although Dostoevski ended up on believing in Christ, he took the long road to get there, a most interesting and perhaps unwholesome road over roulette tables, raping a small child, standing before a wall waiting for the rifles to fire, he found that "adversity is the main-spring of self-realism," he found his Christ, but what a most interesting Christ, a self-made Christ, and I bow to him. ~ Charles Bukowski

You shoulda known the entirety of the trap, a**hole,
love means eventual pain
victory means eventual defeat
grace means eventual slovenliness,
there's no way
out ... you see, you
understand? ~ Charles Bukowski

Beware of those that seek constant crowds. they are nothing alone. ~ Charles Bukowski

Yes, Wagner and the storm intermix with the wine as nights like this run up my wrists and up into my head and back down into the gut ~ Charles Bukowski

The reason so much bad poetry is written is that it is written as poetry instead of concept. And the reason the public doesn't understand poetry is that there is nothing to understand, and the reason most poets write it is that they think they understand. Nothing is to be understood or "regained." It is simply to be written. By someone. Sometime. And not too often. ~ Charles Bukowski

in the most decent sometimes sun
there is the softsmoke feeling from urns
and the canned sound of old battleplanes
and if you go inside and run your finger
along the window ledge you'll find
dirt, maybe even earth.
and if you look out the window
there will be the day, and as you
get older you'll keep looking
keep looking
sucking your tongue in a little
ah ah no no maybe

some do it naturally
some obscenely
everywhere. ~ Charles Bukowski

Democracy doesn't work, Christianity doesn't work, nor Atheism, Nothing works but the gun and the man on top. ~ Charles Bukowski

The world had somehow gone too far, and spontaneous kindness could never be so easy. ~ Charles Bukowski

I was feeling unfulfilled and, frankly, rather crappy about everything. I wasn't going anywhere and neither was the rest of the world. We were all just hanging around waiting to die and meanwhile doing little things to fill the space. Some of us weren't even doing little things. ~ Charles Bukowski

The courage it took to get out of bed each
morning
to face the same things
over and over
was
enormous. ~ Charles Bukowski

I think that the world should be full of cats and full of rain, that's all, just cats and rain, rain and cats, very nice, good night. ~ Charles Bukowski

The young will never know
how recklessly we went
from bed to bed,
from body to body,
from night to night.
it all, at times, became a
bore. ~ Charles Bukowski

When everything works best, it's not because you chose writing but because writing chose you. It's when you're mad with it, it's when it's stuffed in your ears, your nostrils, under your fingernails. It's when there's no hope but that. ~ Charles Bukowski

cities are built to kill people ~ Charles Bukowski

Some people have written that my writing has helped them go on.
It has helped me too. The writing, the roses, the 9 cats. ~ Charles Bukowski

Many a good man has been put under the bridge by a woman. ~ Charles Bukowski

i am dead but i know the dead are not like this."

the dead can sleep
they don't get up and rage
they don't have a wife.

her white face
like a flower in a closed window lifts up and
looks at me.

the curtain smokes a cigarette
and a moth dies in a
freeway cash
as I examine the shadows of my
hands.

an owl, the size of a baby clock
rings for me, come on come on
it says as Jerusalem is hustled
down crotch-stained halls.

the 5 a.m. grass is nasal now
in hums of battleships and valleys
in the raped light that brings on
the fascist birds.

I put out the lamp and get in bed
beside her, she thinks I'm there
mumbles a rosy gratitude
as I stretch my legs
to coffin length
get in and swim away
from frogs and fortunes. ~ Charles Bukowski

It was wintertime. I was starving to death trying to be a writer in New York. I hadn't eaten for three or four days. So, I finally said, "I'm gonna have a big bag of popcorn." And God, I hadn't tasted food for so long, it was so good. Each kernel, you know, each one was like a steak! I chewed and it would just drop into my poor stomach. My stomach would say, "THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!" I was in heaven, just walking along, and two guys happened by, and one said to the other, "Jesus Christ!" The other one said, "What was it?" "Did you see that guy eating popcorn? God, it was awful!" And so I couldn't enjoy the rest of the popcorn. I thought; what do you mean, "it was awful?" I'm in heaven here. I guess I was kinda dirty. They can always tell a fucked-up guy. ~ Charles Bukowski

but we joke and laugh
otherwise we would start
screaming. ~ Charles Bukowski

the next time you listen to Borodin remember his wife used his compositions to line the cat boxes with or to cover jars of sour milk; ~ Charles Bukowski

I avoided any direct reference to Jews and Blacks, who had never given me any trouble. All my trouble had come from white gentiles. ~ 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

if you don't have much soul left and you know it, you still got soul. ~ Charles Bukowski

My writing is jagged and harsh, I want it to remain that way; I don't want it smoothed out. ~ Charles Bukowski

Beware
Those Who
Are ALWAYS
READING
BOOKS ~ Charles Bukowski

I like the way Mahler wandered about in his music and still retained his passion. He must have looked like an earthquake walking down the street. ~ Charles Bukowski

Christmas poem to a man in jail
hello Bill Abbott:
I appreciate your passing around my books in
jail there, my poems and stories.
if I can lighten the load for some of those guys with
my books, fine.
but literature, you know, is difficult for the
average man to assimilate (and for the unaverage man too);
I don't like most poetry, for example,
so I write mine the way I like to read it. ~ Charles Bukowski

Your writing", she said to me, "it's so raw. It's like a sledgehammer, and yet it has humor and tenderness ... ~ Charles Bukowski

Stanley was right. I never hit another home run. I struck out most of the time. But they always remembered that home run and while they still hated me, it was a better kind of hatred, like they weren't quite sure why. Football ~ Charles Bukowski

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

I had a cigar in my mouth and whiskey on my breath. I felt like money. I looked like money. ~ Charles Bukowski

Learn, he says, that there will be hours, days
and months ahead of feeling absolutely terrible
and nothing can change that; neither new
girlfriends, health professionals, changes of diet, dope, humility, or
God. ~ Charles Bukowski

I guess we often get the deep blues, both of us, and wonder what it all means- the people, the buildings, the day by day things, the waste of time, of ourselves. ~ Charles Bukowski

The ocean," I said, "look at it out there, battering, crawling up and down. 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. It's nice to be a champion. It's nice to know your moves. ~ Charles Bukowski

We were in rich territory. I had forgotten that some people lived quite well while most others ate their own shit for breakfast. ~ Charles Bukowski

I had a dream about you. I opened your chest like a cabinet, it had doors, and when I opened the doors, I saw all kinds of soft things inside you--teddy bears, tiny fuzzy animals, all these soft, cuddly things. ~ Charles Bukowski

She would have been a better fuck in Greece, maybe. America was a shitty place to fuck. ~ Charles Bukowski

You lose what individualism you have, if you have enough of course, you retain some of it, but most don't have enough, so they become watchers of game shows, y'know, things like that. Then you work the 8 hour job with almost a feeling of goodness, like you're doing something, and you get married, like marriage is a victory and you have children like having children is a victory, but most things people do are a total grind, marriage, birth, children, it's something they HAVE to do because they have nothing else to do. There is no glory in it, no esteem, no fire, their lives are flat and the earth is full of them. Sorry, but thats the way I see it. I could not accept the snail's pace 8-5, Johnnie Carson, merry christmas, happy new year, to me it's the sickest of all sick things. ~ Charles Bukowski

I want so much that is not here and do not know
where to go. ~ Charles Bukowski

Truth changes as men change, and when truth becomes stable men will become dead, and the insect and the fire and the flood will become truth. ~ Charles Bukowski

Beware women grown
old
who were never
anything but
young ~ Charles Bukowski

Parties sickened me. I hated the game-playing, the dirty play, the flirting, the amateurs drunks, the bores. ~ Charles Bukowski

Great writers are indecent people they live unfairly saving the best part for paper. good human beings save the world so that bastards like me can keep creating art, become immortal. if you read this after I am dead it means I made it. ~ Charles Bukowski

Pain is strange. A cat killing a bird, a car accident, a fire ... Pain arrives, BANG, and there it is, it sits on you. It's real. And to anybody watching, you look foolish. Like you've suddenly become an idiot. There's no cure for it unless you know somebody who understands how you feel, and knows how to help. ~ Charles Bukowski

He just stares. He's so quiet.
That's the way we want him.
Still water runs deep.
Not with this one. The only thing that runs deep with him are the holes in his ears. ~ Charles Bukowski

Henry Chinaski, the principal said over the microphone. And I walked forward. There was no applause. The one kindly soul in the audience gave two or three clasps. ~ Charles Bukowski

To do a dull thing with style-now that's what I call art. ~ Charles Bukowski

What matters most is how well you walk through the fire ~ Charles Bukowski

Manny, what are you doing working in auto parts?" "Resting. ~ Charles Bukowski

I often carry things to read so that I will not have to look at the people. ~ Charles Bukowski

When I am feeling low all I have to do is watch my cats and my courage returns. I study these creatures. they are my teachers. ~ Charles Bukowski

What's so nice about laying in bed all day?" "I don't have to see anybody." "You like that?" "Oh, yes. ~ Charles Bukowski

The best often die by their own hand just to get away, and those left behind can never quite understand why anybody would ever want to get away from them ~ Charles Bukowski

My youth,
one time,
that time
I knew
even through the
nothingness,
it was a
celebration
of something not to
do
but only
know. ~ 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

I would certainly end up forever crying the blues into a
coffee cup in a park for old men playing
chess or silly games of some sort. ~ Charles Bukowski

And now sometimes I'm interviewed, they want to hear about
life and literature and I get drunk and hold up my cross-eyed,
shot, runover de-tailed cat and I say,"look, look
at this!"
but they don't understand, they say something like,"you
say you've been influenced by Celine?"
no," I hold the cat up,"by what happens, by
things like this, by this, by this! ~ Charles Bukowski

drink without smoke is like cock without pussy ~ Charles Bukowski

A love like that was a serious illness, an illness from which you never entirely recover. ~ Charles Bukowski

Dismiss perfection as an ache of the greedy, but do not give in to the mass modesty of easy imperfection. ~ Charles Bukowski

I closed my eyes and listened to the waves. Thousands of fish out there, eating each other. Endless mouths and assholes swallowing and shitting. The whole earth was nothing but mouths and assholes swallowing and shitting, and fucking. ~ Charles Bukowski