Charles Bukowski Quotes

293 Sourced Quotes

Oh, I don't mean you're handsome, not the way people think of handsome. Your face seems kind. But your eyes - they're beautiful. They're wild, crazy, like some animal peering out of a forest on fire.

Charles Bukowski
People are not good to each other. perhaps if they were our deaths would not be so sad.

Charles Bukowski
I found out that Hollywood is more crooked, dumber, crueler, stupider than all the books I've read about it. They didn't go deeply enough into how it lacks art, and soul, and heart— how it's really a piece of crap. There are too many hands directing, there're too many fingers in the pot, and they're all kind of ignorant about what they're doing. They're greedy, and they're vicious. So you don't get much of a movie.

Charles Bukowski
But I couldn't help thinking, god, all these mailmen do is drop in letters and get laid. This is the job for me, oh yes yes yes.

Charles Bukowski
There is moss on the walls and the stain of thought and failure and waiting

Charles Bukowski
And our few good times will be rare because we have the critical sense and are not easy to fool with laughter

Charles Bukowski
When I went to the Yellow Cab Company I passed the Cancer Building and I remembered that there were worse things than looking for a job you didn't want.

Charles Bukowski
I sit on the couch watching her arrange her long red hair before my bedroom mirror. she pulls her hair up and piles it on top of her head- she lets her eyes look at my eyes- then she drops her hair and lets it fall down in front of her face. we go to bed and I hold her speechlessly from the back my arm around her neck I touch her wrists and hands feel up to her elbows no further.

Charles Bukowski
That's when I first learned that it wasn't enough to just do your job, you had to have an interest in it, even a passion for it.

Charles Bukowski
I was still proud of that moment
back then
when Jed handed me
that pint
and
I drained
a third of it
with all the disciples
watching.
damn, there was no way
it seemed
we could ever
lose
but we did.

and it took me
3 or 4 decades to
move on just a
little.
and Jed,
if you are still here
tonight,
(I forgot to tell you
then)
here's a thanks
for that drink.

Charles Bukowski
Unless it comes out of your soul like a rocket, unless being still would drive you to madness or suicide or murder, don't do it. unless the sun inside you is burning your gut, don't do it. when it is truly time, and if you have been chosen, it will do it by itself and it will keep on doing it until you die or it dies in you. there is no other way. and there never was.

Charles Bukowski
Live, shit, drinking and smoking should be the daily bread of all poets.

Charles Bukowski
The centuries are sprinkled with rare magic with divine creatures who help us get past the common and extraordinary ills that beset us

Charles Bukowski
This is very important — to take leisure time. Pace is the essence. Without stopping entirely and doing nothing at all for great periods, you're gonna lose everything...just to do nothing at all, very, very important. And how many people do this in modern society? Very few. That's why they're all totally mad, frustrated, angry and hateful.

Charles Bukowski
But as God said, crossing his legs, I see where I have made plenty of poets but not so very much poetry.

Charles Bukowski
I was given the job of milking the cows, finally, and it got me up earlier than anybody. But it was kind of nice, pulling at those cows' tits (pg. 172).

Charles Bukowski
I am too sick to lay down the sidewalks frighten me the whole damned city frightens me, what I will become what I have become frightens me.

Charles Bukowski
Basically, that's why I wrote: to save my ass, to save my ass from the madhouse, from the streets, from myself.

Charles Bukowski
I knew I was strong, and maybe like they said, "crazy." But I had this feeling inside of me that something real was there.

Charles Bukowski
People just weren't interesting. Maybe they weren't supposed to be. But animals, birds, even insects were. I couldn't understand it.

Charles Bukowski
Human relationships didn't work anyhow. Only the first two weeks had any zing, then the participants lost their interest. Masks dropped away and real people began to appear: cranks, imbeciles, the demented, the vengeful, sadists, killers. Modern society had created its own kind and they feasted on each other. It was a duel to the death—in a cesspool.

Charles Bukowski
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.

Charles Bukowski
Nothing was ever in tune. People just blindly grabbed at whatever there was: communism, health foods, zen, surfing, ballet, hypnotism, group encounters, orgies, biking, herbs, Catholicism, weight-lifting, travel, withdrawal, vegetarianism, India, painting, writing, sculpting, composing, conducting, backpacking, yoga, copulating, gambling, drinking, hanging around, frozen yogurt, Beethoven, Bach, Buddha, Christ, TM, H, carrot juice, suicide, handmade suits, jet travel, New York City, and then it all evaporated and fell apart. People had to find things to do while waiting to die. I guess it was nice to have a choice.

Charles Bukowski
Sometimes I felt that I didn't even know who I was. All right, I'm Nicky Belane. But check this. Somebody could yell out, 'Hey, Harry! Harry Martel!' and I'd most likely answer, 'Yeah, what is it?' I mean, I could be anybody, what does it matter?

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

Charles Bukowski
Sometimes a man doesn't know what to do about things and sometimes it's best to lie very still and try not to think at all about anything.

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

Charles Bukowski
A man does not get old because he nears death; a man gets old because he can no longer see the false from the good.

Charles Bukowski
We've died so many times now that we can only wonder why we still care.

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

Charles Bukowski