Charles Bukowski Quotes

293 Sourced Quotes

I don't carry notebooks and I don't consciously store ideas. I try not to think that I am a writer and I am pretty good at doing that. I don't like writers, but then I don't like insurance salesmen either.

Charles Bukowski
If you can only remain pure in your stupidity, someday you may get a phone call from hell.

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

Charles Bukowski
It's not the large things that send a man to the madhouse... no, it's the continuing series of small tragedies... not the death of his love but the shoelace that snaps with no time left.

Charles Bukowski
The whole LSD, STP, marijuana, heroin, hashish, prescription cough medicine crowd suffers from the "Watchtower" itch: you gotta be with us, man, or you're out, you're dead. This pitch is a continual and seeming MUST with those who use the stuff. It's no wonder they keep getting busted.

Charles Bukowski
The ladies usually go for the biggest damn fool they can find; that is why the human race stands where it does today: we have bred the clever and lasting Casanovas, all hollow inside, like the chocolate Easter bunnies we foster upon our poor children.

Charles Bukowski
To die on a kitchen floor at 7 o'clock in the morning while other people are frying eggs is not so rough unless it happens to you.

Charles Bukowski
We do not abandon ship. I say, as corny as it may sound, through the strength and spirit and fire and dare and gamble of a few men in a few ways we can save the carcass of humanity from drowning. No light goes out until it goes out. Let's fight as men, not rats. Period. No further addition.

Charles Bukowski
I used to lay drunk in alleys and I probably will again.Bukowski, who is he? I read about Bukowski and it doesn't seem like anything to do with me.

Charles Bukowski
The writing's easy, it's the living that is sometimes difficult.

Charles Bukowski
The poet, as a rule, is a half-man - a sissy, not a real person, and he is in no shape to lead real men in matters of blood, or courage.

Charles Bukowski
I guess for me Hemingway is a lot like it is for others: he goes down well when we are young.

Charles Bukowski
Courts are places where the ending is written first and all that precedes is simply vaudeville.

Charles Bukowski
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.

Charles Bukowski
Death meant little to me. It was the last joke in a series of bad jokes.

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

Charles Bukowski
The years have gone by quickly. Death sits in the seat next to me. We make a lovely couple.

Charles Bukowski
I walked around the block twice, passed 200 people and failed to see a human being.

Charles Bukowski
A man needed somebody. There wasn't anybody around, so you had to make up somebody, make him up to be like a man should be. It wasn't make-believe or cheating. The other way was make-believe and cheating: living your life without a man like him around.

Charles Bukowski
If it doesn't come bursting out of you in spite of everything, don't do it.

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

Charles Bukowski
A day of minor profit or prophet led to a night of drunkenness.

Charles Bukowski
Those faces you see every day on the streets were not created entirely without hope: be kind to them - like you they have not escaped.

Charles Bukowski