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Love dries up, I thought as I walked back to the bathroom, even faster than sperm.
Charles Bukowski
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A love like that was a serious illness, an illness from which you never entirely recover.
Charles Bukowski
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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
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Real loneliness is not necessarily limited to when you are alone.
Charles Bukowski
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We've died so many times now that we can only wonder why we still care.
Charles Bukowski
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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
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The grace is being able to like rock music, symphony music, jazz … anything that contains the original energy of joy.
Charles Bukowski
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The way to create art is to burn and destroy ordinary concepts and to substitute them with new truths that run down from the top of the head and out of the heart
Charles Bukowski
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Turgenev was a very serious fellow but he could make me laugh because a truth first encountered can be very funny. When someone else's truth is the same as your truth, and he seems to be saying it just for you, that's great.
Charles Bukowski
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Most people are much better at saying things in letters than in conversation, and some people can write artistic, inventive letters, but when they try a poem or story or novel they become pretentious.
Charles Bukowski
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I thought about taking a shower but I could see the headlines: MAILMAN CAUGHT DRINKING THE BLOOD OF GOD AND TAKING A SHOWER, NAKED, IN A ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH.... I found out later that mail for the church was delivered to the parish house around the corner. But now, or course, I knew where to... shower when I'm down and out.
Charles Bukowski
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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
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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
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And our few good times will be rare because we have the critical sense and are not easy to fool with laughter
Charles Bukowski
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There is moss on the walls and the stain of thought and failure and waiting
Charles Bukowski
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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
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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.
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People are not good to each other. perhaps if they were our deaths would not be so sad.
Charles Bukowski
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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
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They wouldn't fire me. Even the salesmen liked me. They were robbing the boss out the back door but I didn't say anything. That was their little game. It didn't interest me. I wasn't much of a petty thief. I wanted the whole world or nothing.
Charles Bukowski
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Most people are not ready for death, theirs or anybody elses.
Charles Bukowski
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There must be a way. surely there must be a way that we have not yet thought of. who put this brain inside of me? it cries it demands it says that there is a chance. it will not say "no.
Charles Bukowski
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I guess we often get the deep blues, both of us, and wonder what it all means- the people, the buildings, the day by day things, the waste of time, of ourselves.
Charles Bukowski
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The dog approached again, cautiously. I found the bologna sandwich, ripped off a chunk, wiped the cheap watery mustard off, then placed it on the sidewalk. The dog walked up to the bit of sandwich, put his nose to it, sniffed, then turned and walked off. This time he didn't look back. He accelerated down the street. No wonder I had been depressed all my life. I wasn't getting proper nourishment.
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And I said to myself that he was the first thing that I had ever missed in my life.
Charles Bukowski
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Quote of the day
Life is not having been told that the man has just waxed the floor.
Ogden Nash
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:
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man
love
life
time
god
alone
drink
woman
day
die
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Charles Bukowski on Wikipedia
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