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The human race had always disgusted me. essentially, what made them disgusting was the family-relationship illness, which included marriage, exchange of power and aid, which neighborhood, your district, your city, your county, your state, your nation-everybody grabbing each other's assholes in the Honeycomb of survival out of a fear-animalistic stupidity.
Charles Bukowski
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A dry period for me means perhaps going two or three nights without writing. I probably have dry periods but I'm not aware of them and I go on writing, only the writing probably isn't much good.
Charles Bukowski
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The role of the poet is almost nothing...drearily nothing. And when he steps outside of his boots and tries to get tough as our dear Ezra [Pound] did, he will get his pink little ass slapped.
Charles Bukowski
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I can't think of any poet-recluses outside of one dead Jeffers. [Robinson Jeffers] The rest of them want to slobber over each other and hug each other. It appears to me that I am the last of the poet-recluses.
Charles Bukowski
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Hemingway and Saroyan had the line, the magic of it. The problem was that Hemingway didn't know how to laugh and Saroyan was filled with sugar.
Charles Bukowski
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The more cats you have, the longer you live. If you have a hundred cats, you'll live ten times longer than if you have ten. Someday this will be discovered, and people will have a thousand cats and live forever.
Charles Bukowski
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I don't think I'll travel anymore. Travel is nothing but an inconvenience. There is always enough trouble where you are.
Charles Bukowski
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There are no good wars or bad wars. The only thing bad about a war is
to lose it. All wars have been fought for a so-called good Cause on both
sides. But only the victor's Cause becomes history's Noble Cause. It's not a
matter of who is right or who is wrong, it's a matter of who has the best
generals and the better army!
Charles Bukowski
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The worst thing for a writer is to know another writer, and worse than that, to know a number of other writers. Like flies on the same turd.
Charles Bukowski
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There is something about writing poetry that brings a man close to the cliff's edge.
Charles Bukowski
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I don't think I have written a poem when I was completely sober. But I have written a few good ones or a few bad ones under the hammer of a black hangover when I didn't know whether another drink or a blade would be the best thing.
Charles Bukowski
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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
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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
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I pretend to understand because I don't want anybody to be hurt
Charles Bukowski
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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
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When I'm drinking around people, I tend to get silly or pugnacious or wild, which can cause problems.
Charles Bukowski
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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
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Alcohol is probably one of the greatest things to arrive upon the earth - alongside of me.
Charles Bukowski
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Food is good for the nerves and the spirit. Courage comes from the belly – all else is desperation.
Charles Bukowski
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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
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"I've given you my time. It's all I've got to give - it's all any man has. And for a pitiful buck and a quarter an hour."... "my time so that you can live in your big house on the hill and have all the things that go with it. If anybody has lost anything on this deal, on this arrangement... I've been the loser.
Charles Bukowski
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On the radio I heard the news
of that day
at least 6 times, I was
well versed in world
affairs.
the remainder of the stations played a
thin, sick music.
the classical stations refused to come in
clearly
and when they did
it was a stale repetition of standard and
tiresome works.
I turned the radio off.
a strange whirling began in my
head—it circled behind the forehead, clockwise...
I began to wonder, is this what happens
when one goes
mad?
Charles Bukowski
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From the beginning, through the middle years and up to the end: too bad, too bad, too bad.
Charles Bukowski
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What a weary time those years were — to have the desire and the need to live but not the ability.
Charles Bukowski
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Many a good man has been put under the bridge by a woman.
Charles Bukowski
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Quote of the day
Now if the harvest is over, And the world cold, Give me the bonus of laughter, As I lose hold.
John Betjeman
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
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