Charles Bukowski Quotes

293 Sourced Quotes

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
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
We have wasted History like a bunch of drunks shooting dice back in the men's crapper of the local bar.

Charles Bukowski
All a guy needed was a chance. Somebody was alway controlling who got a chance and who didn't.

Charles Bukowski
There is a place in the heart that will never be filled a space and even during the best moments and the greatest times times we will know it we will know it more than ever there is a place in the heart that will never be filled and we will wait and wait in that space.

Charles Bukowski
My 6 foot goddess makes me laugh the laughter of the mutilated who still need love... she has saved me from everything that is not here

Charles Bukowski
I once lay in a white hospital for the dying and the dying self, where some god pissed a rain of reason to make things grow only to die, where on my knees I prayed for LIGHT, I prayed for l*i*g*h*t, and praying crawled like a blind slug into the web where threads of wind stuck against my mind and I died of pity for Man, for myself, on a cross without nails, watching in fear as the pig belches in his sty, farts, blinks and eats.

Charles Bukowski
You boys can keep your virgins give me hot old women in high heels with asses that forgot to get old.

Charles Bukowski
Sweet Christ, you must know that a man will go further for any poem than for any woman ever born.

Charles Bukowski
Love dries up, I thought as I walked back to the bathroom, even faster than sperm.

Charles Bukowski
A love like that was a serious illness, an illness from which you never entirely recover.

Charles Bukowski
People were interesting at first. Then later, slowly but surely, all the flaws and madness would manifest themselves. I would become less and less to them; they would mean less and less to me.

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

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

Charles Bukowski