Charles Bukowski Quotes

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

My body gnaws at me from one side and my spirit gnaws at me from the other.

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

I am a poem. There is no way out.

It was like the beginning of life and laughter. It was the real meaning of the sun

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.

I have no time for things that have no soul.

Some nights I knew that if I slept I would die.

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.

Real loneliness is not necessarily limited to when you are alone.

People in love often become edgy, dangerous. They lose their sense of perspective.

Love is a horse with a broken leg trying to stand while 45,000 people watch.

If there are junk yards in hell, love is the dog that guards the gates.

There is something about writing poetry that brings a man close to the cliff's edge.

Sometimes I get too exhausted to even feel bad

It seems I make a lot of mistakes and it seems that I am not allowed any.

There still might be a place for us somewhere.

Love came hard and very seldom. When it did it was usually for the wrong reasons.

Our disappointment sits between us.

I heard an airplane passing overhead. I wished I was on it.

If I bet on humanity, I'd never cash a ticket.

I never met another man I'd rather be. And even if that's a delusion, it's a lucky one.

Style means no shield at all. Style means no front at all. Style means ultimate naturalness. Style means one man alone with billions of men about.

Most people's deaths are a sham. There's nothing left to die.

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

We waste days like mad blackbirds and pray for alcoholic nightsour silk-sick human smiles wrap around us like somebody else's confetti

stay with the beer. beer is continuous blood. a continuous lover.

Once a woman turns against you, forget it. They can love you, then something turns in them. They can watch you dying in a gutter, run over by a car, and they'll spit on you.

I don't remember going to bed, but in the morning, there I was.

Erections, Ejaculations,Exhibitions and General Tales of Ordinary Madness.

Boring damned people. All over the earth. Propagating more boring damned people. What a horror show. The earth swarmed with them.

Invent yourself and then reinvent yourself.

When a hot woman meets a hermit one of them is going to change.

I wish to weep but sorrow is stupid. I wish to believe but belief is a graveyard.

Death is nothing, brother, it's life that's hard

to fight for each minute is to fight for what is possible within yourself, so that your life and your death will not be like theirs.

The trouble with a mask is it never changes

I just want a hot cup of coffee,black,and I don’t want to hear about your troubles.

my beerdrunk soul is sadder than all the dead christmas trees of the world.

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.

I am this fiery snail crawling home.

they simply never understand, do they, that sometimes solitude is one of the most beautiful things on earth?

No matter how little a man has he will find that he will always settle for less.

I didn't have any friends at school, didn't want any. I felt better being alone. I sat on a bench and watched the others play and they looked foolish to me.

Drinking is an emotional thing. It joggles you out of the standardism of everyday life, out of everything being the same.

mercy, I think, doesn't the human race know anything about mercy?

places to hunt places to hide are getting harder to find, and pet canaries and goldfish too, did you notice that?

Before my death I hope to obtain my life.

the grace is being able to like rock music, symphony music, jazz … anything that contains the original energy of joy.

The streets were full of insane & dull people. Most of them lived in nice houses and didn't seem to work, and you wondered how they did it.