Charles Bukowski Quotes

293 Sourced Quotes

But then if you lied to a man about his talent just because he was sitting across from you, that was the most unforgivable lie of them all, because that was telling him to go on, to continue which was the worst way for a man without real talent to waste his life, finally. But many people did just that, friends and relatives mostly.

Charles Bukowski
And then there are some who believe that old relationships can be revived and made new again. but please if you feel that way don't phone don't write don't arrive

Charles Bukowski
Almost everybody is born a genius and buried an idiot.

Charles Bukowski
I had lumps all over my body, dizzy spells, I was spitting blood, and I had gone there only to be given an appointment for three weeks later. Now like every American boy I had always been told: catch cancer early. Then you go down to catch it early and they make you wait three weeks for an appointment. That's the difference between what we're told and actuality.

Charles Bukowski
Her violence frightened me. She always claimed that I was the jealous one, and I was often jealous, but when I saw things working against me I simply became disgusted and withdrew. Lydia was different. She reacted. She was the Head Cheerleader at the Game of Violence.

Charles Bukowski
LSD, yeah, the big parade – everybody's doin' it now. Take LSD, then you are a poet, an intellectual. What a sick mob. I am building a machine gun in my closet now to take out as many of them as I can before they get me.

Charles Bukowski
So, that's what they wanted: lies. Beautiful lies. That's what they needed. People were fools. It was going to be easy for me.

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

Charles Bukowski
There are only two things wrong with money: too much or too little.

Charles Bukowski
I think I need a drink.' 'Almost everybody does only they don't know it.

Charles Bukowski
Your writing", she said to me, "it's so raw. It's like a sledgehammer, and yet it has humor and tenderness....

Charles Bukowski
Even the stove and the refrigerator looked human, I mean good human - they seemed to have arms and voices and they said, hang around, kid, it's good here, it can be very good here.

Charles Bukowski
Anybody can be a non-drunk. It takes a special talent to be a drunk. It takes endurance. Endurance is more important than truth.

Charles Bukowski
I think that everything should be made available to everybody, and I mean LSD, cocaine, codeine, grass, opium, the works. Nothing on earth available to any man should be confiscated and made unlawful by other men in more seemingly powerful and advantageous positions. More often than not Democratic Law works to the advantage of the few even though the many have voted; this, of course, is because the few have told them how to vote. I grow tired of 18th century moralities in a 20th century space-atomic age. If I want to kill myself I feel that should be my business. If I go out and hold up gas stations at night to pay for my supply it is because the law inflates a very cheap thing into an escalated war against my nerves and my soul.

Charles Bukowski
God knows I am not too hippy. Perhaps because I am too much around the hip and I fear fads for, like anybody else, I like something that tends to last.

Charles Bukowski
I have two rules. One is, never trust a man who smokes a pipe. The other is, never trust a man with shiny shoes.

Charles Bukowski
"Baby," I said. "I'm a genius but nobody knows it but me."

Charles Bukowski
An intellectual is a man who says a simple thing in a difficult way; an artist is a man who says a difficult thing in a simple way.

Charles Bukowski
I have been treated better than I should have been—not by life in general nor by the machinery of things but by women.

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

Charles Bukowski
I wasn't lonely. I experienced no self-pity. I was just caught up in a life in which I could find no meaning.

Charles Bukowski
I had noticed that both in the very poor and very rich extremes of society the mad were often allowed to mingle freely.

Charles Bukowski
Potential," I said, "doesn't mean a thing. You've got to do it. Almost every baby in a crib has more potential than I have.

Charles Bukowski
"MR. JONSTONE IS A FINE MAN!"
"Don't be silly, he's an obvious sadist," I said.
"How long have you been in the Post Office?"
"Three weeks."
"MR. JONSTONE HAS BEEN WITH THE POST OFFICE FOR 30 YEARS!"
"What does that have to do with it?"
"I said, MR. JONSTONE IS A FINE MAN!"
I believe the poor fellow actually wanted to kill me.
..."All right," I said, "Jonstone is a fine man. Forget the whole... thing." Then I walked out and took the next day off. Without pay, of course.

Charles Bukowski
Nothing is worse than to finish a good shit, then reach over and find the toilet paper container empty. Even the most horrible human being on earth deserves to wipe his ass.

Charles Bukowski
It seemed to me that I had never met another person on earth as discouraging to my happiness as my father. and it appeared that I had the same effect upon him.

Charles Bukowski
I suppose like others I have come through fire and sword, love gone wrong, head-on crashes, drunk at sea, and I have listened to the simple sound of water running in tubs and wished to drown

Charles Bukowski
And even the trees we walked under seemed less than trees and more like everything else.

Charles Bukowski
Many a good man has been put under the bridge by a woman.

Charles Bukowski
…He was always high on drugs. I was not a drug man, but in case I wanted to hide from myself for a few days, I knew I could get anything I wanted from him.

Charles Bukowski