Authors
Topics
Lists
Pictures
Resources
More about Charles Bukowski
Charles Bukowski Quotes
292 Sourced Quotes
Source
Report...
I was naturally a loner, content just to live with a woman, eat with her, sleep with her, walk down the street with her. I didn't want conversation, or to go anywhere except the racetrack or the boxing matches. I didn't understand t.v. I felt foolish paying money to go into a movie theatre and sit with other people to share their emotions. Parties sickened me. I hated the game-playing, the dirty play, the flirting, the amateur drunks, the bores.
Charles Bukowski
Source
Report...
Any damn fool can beg up some kind of job; it takes a wise man to make it without working.
Charles Bukowski
Source
Report...
I'll get back to the whores and the horses and the booze, while there's time.
Charles Bukowski
Source
Report...
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.
Charles Bukowski
Source
Report...
I had decided against religion a couple of years back. If it were true, it made fools out of people, or it drew fools. And if it weren't true, the fools were all the more foolish. What I need is a good doctor, I thought. You either lived or died.
Charles Bukowski
Source
Report...
Food is good for the nerves and the spirit. Courage comes from the belly – all else is desperation.
Charles Bukowski
Source
Report...
Alcohol is probably one of the greatest things to arrive upon the earth - alongside of me.
Charles Bukowski
Source
Report...
Why don't we go back out there and tell them what happened? because nothing happened except that everybody has been driven insane and stupid by life. in this society there are only two things that count: don't be caught without money and don't get caught high on any kind of high. (Night Streets of Madness)
Charles Bukowski
Source
Report...
When I'm drinking around people, I tend to get silly or pugnacious or wild, which can cause problems.
Charles Bukowski
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
I pretend to understand because I don't want anybody to be hurt
Charles Bukowski
Source
Report...
I squeezed Fay's hand, kissed her on the forehead. She closed her eyes and seemed to sleep then. She was not a young woman. Maybe she hadn't saved the world but she had made a major improvement. Ring one up for Fay.
Charles Bukowski
Source
Report...
Some men never die and some men never live but we're all alive tonight.
Charles Bukowski
Source
Report...
When I was young I was depressed all the time. But suicide no longer seemed a possibility in my life. At my age there was very little left to kill. It was good to be old, no matter what they said. It was reasonable that a man had to be at least 50 years old before he could write with anything like clarity.
Charles Bukowski
Source
Report...
Places to hunt places to hide are getting harder to find, and pet canaries and goldfish too, did you notice that?
Charles Bukowski
Source
Report...
And I laugh, I can still laugh, who can't laugh when the whole thing is so ridiculous that only the insane, the clowns, the half-wits, the cheaters, the whores, the horseplayers, the bankrobbers, the poets... are interesting?
Charles Bukowski
Source
Report...
I'm going, she said. I love you but you're crazy, you're doomed.
Charles Bukowski
Source
Report...
The crowd is the gathering place of the weakest; true creation is a solitary act.
Charles Bukowski
Source
Report...
Lighting new cigarettes, pouring more drinks. It has been a beautiful fight. Still is.
Charles Bukowski
Source
Report...
The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose, they sliced a little more off you, until there was nothing left. At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole goddamned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidate who reminded them most of themselves. I had no interests. I had no interest in anything. I had no idea how I was going to escape. At least the others had some taste for life. They seemed to understand something that I didn't understand. Maybe I was lacking. It was possible. I often felt inferior. I just wanted to get away from them. But there was no place to go.
Charles Bukowski
Source
Report...
Sexual intercourse is kicking death in the ass while singing.
Charles Bukowski
Source
Report...
I didn't even have a uniform, just a cap. I wore my regular clothes. The way my shackjob Betty and I drank there was hardly money for clothes.
Charles Bukowski
Source
Report...
It is all ash and dry leaves and grief gone like an ocean liner.
Charles Bukowski
Source
Report...
I didn't like anybody in that school. I think they knew that. I think that's why they disliked me. I didn't like the way they walked or looked or talked, but I didn't like my mother or father either. I still had the feeling of being surrounded by white empty space. There was always a slight nausea in my stomach.
Charles Bukowski
Source
Report...
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
1
...
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
Quote of the day
We owe something to extravagance, for thrift and adventure seldom go hand in hand.
Lady Randolph Churchill
Charles Bukowski
Born:
August 16, 1920
Died:
March 9, 1994
(aged 73)
Bio:
Henry Charles Bukowski was a German-born American poet, novelist, and short story writer.
Known for:
The last night of the earth poems (1992)
Ham on Rye (1982)
Love Is a Dog from Hell (1977)
Factotum (1975)
Women (1978)
Most used words:
people
man
love
life
time
god
alone
drink
woman
day
die
feel
felt
live
human
Charles Bukowski on Wikipedia
Suggest an edit or a new quote
Charles Bukowski Quotes
Charles Bukowski Short Quotes
Quotes about Charles Bukowski
American Actor Quotes
Actor Quotes
20th-century Actor Quotes
Related People
Ernest Hemingway
American Journalist
Jack Kerouac
American Poet
Henry Miller
American Novelist
John Fante
American Screenwriter
Featured Authors
Lists
Predictions that didn't happen
If it's on the Internet it must be true
Remarkable Last Words (or Near-Last Words)
Picture Quotes
Confucius
Philip James Bailey
Eleanor Roosevelt
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Popular Topics
life
love
nature
time
god
power
human
mind
work
art
heart
thought
men
day
×
Lib Quotes