Charles Bukowski Quotes

Sometimes you just have to pee in the sink.

Great art is horseshit, buy tacos.

you boys can keep your virgins give me hot old women in high heels with asses that forgot to get old.

Never trust a man in a jumpsuit

Look, let me put it this way: with me, you’re number one and there isn’t even a number two.

American women drove hard bargains and the ended up looking the worst for it. The few natural American women left were mostly in Texas and Louisiana.

There will always be something to ruin our lives, it all depends on what or which finds us first. We are always ripe and ready to be taken.

There are times when those eyes inside your brain stare back at you.

I wasn’t lonely. I experienced no self-pity. I was just caught up in a life in which I could find no meaning.

I've never met another man I'd rather be.

I don't know about other people, but when I wake up in the morning and put my shoes on, I think, Jesus Christ, now what?

magic persists without us no matter what we may do to try to spoil it

we only asked for leopards to guard our thinning dreams.

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

Each person is only given so many evenings and each wasted evening is a gross violation against the natural course of your only life.

We are like roses that have never bothered to bloom when we should have bloomed and it is as if the sun has become disgusted with waiting

Knowledge without follow-through is worse than no knowledge.

If you have the ability to love, love yourself first.

Life's as kind as you let it be.

our bones like stems into the sky will forever cry victory

I am a series of small victories and large defeats.

I am not a man who looks for solutions in God or politics. If somebody else wants to do the dirty work and create a better world for us and he can do it, I will accept it.

With me, my main vision for life was to avoid as many people as possible. The less people I saw the better I felt.

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

I enjoy the bad things that are said about me. It enhances sales and makes me feel evil. I don't like to feel good 'cause I am good. But evil? Yes. It gives me another dimension.

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.

The blankets had fallen off and I stared down at her white back, the shoulder blades sticking out as if they wanted to grow into wings, poke through that skin. Little blades. She was helpless.

They never pay the slaves enough so they can get free, just enough so they can stay alive and come back to work.

It’s so easy to be easy—if you let it.

Existence was not only absurd, it was plain hard work. Think of how many times you put on your underwear in a lifetime. It was appalling, it was disgusting, it was stupid.

the way to create art is to burn and destroy ordinary concepts and to substitute them with new truths that run down from the top of the head and out of the heart

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

To create art means to be crazy alone forever.

some moments are nice, some are nicer, some are even worth writing about.

if it doesn't come bursting out of you in spite of everything, don't do it. unless it comes unasked out of your heart and your mind and your mouth and your gut, don't do it.

I don’t understand people, never will. It looks like I got to travel pretty much alone.

Only the boring get bored

I never write in the daytime. It's like running through the shopping mall with your clothes off. Everybody can see you. At night ... that's when you pull the tricks ... magic.

not writing is not good but trying to write when you can't is worse.

Show me a man who lives alone and has a perpetually clean kitchen, and 8 times out of 9 I'll show you a man with detestable spiritual qualities.

Now something so sad has hold of us that the breath leaves and we can't even cry.

The male, for all his bravado and exploration, is the loyal one, the one who generally feels love. The female is skilled at betrayal and torture and damnation.

I wasn't a misanthrope and I wasn't a misogynist but I liked being alone. It felt good to sit alone in a small space and smoke and drink. I had always been good company for myself.

I pretend to understand because I don't want anybody to be hurt

Poetry is what happens when nothing else can.

unless the sun inside you is burning your gut, don't do it

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

He had long nostril hairs, powerfully intimidating, like an unscheduled nightmare.

when I am feeling low all i have to do is watch my cats and my courage returns

I think I need a drink.' 'Almost everybody does only they don't know it.