Charles Bukowski Quotes

293 Sourced Quotes

Why did I come here? I thought. Why is it always only a matter of choosing between something bad and something worse?

Charles Bukowski
It was sad, it was sad, it was sad. When Betty came back we didn't sing or laugh, or even argue. We sat drinking in the dark, smoking cigarettes, and when we went to sleep, I didn't put my feet on her body or she on mine like we used to. We slept without touching. We had both been robbed.

Charles Bukowski
It is good to be sitting some place in public at 2:30 in the afternoon without getting the flesh ripped from your bones.

Charles Bukowski
"You have a very strange face," she said. "You're not really ugly." "Number four shipping clerk, working his way up." "Have you ever been in love?" "Love is for real people." "You sound real." "I dislike real people." "You dislike them?" "I hate them." We drank some more, not saying much. It continued to snow. Gertrude turned her head and stared into the crowd of people. Then she looked at me. "Isn't he handsome?" "Who?" "That soldier over there. He's sitting alone. He sits so straight. And he's got all his medals on." "Come on, let's get out of here."

Charles Bukowski
It's hard to drink when you dance. And it's hard to dance when you drink.

Charles Bukowski
It's 4:30 in the morning, it's always 4:30 in the morning.

Charles Bukowski
There is only one place to write and that is alone at a typewriter. The writer who has to go into the streets is a writer who does not know the streets... when you leave your typewriter you leave your machine gun and the rats come pouring through.

Charles Bukowski
There were always men looking for jobs in America. There were always all these usable bodies. And I wanted to be a writer. Almost everybody was a writer. Not everybody thought they could be a dentist or an automobile mechanic but everybody knew they could be a writer. Of those fifty guys in the room, probably fifteen of them thought they were writers. Almost everybody used words and could write them down, i. e., almost everybody could be a writer. But most men, fortunately, aren't writers, or even cab drivers, and some men - many men - unfortunately aren't anything.

Charles Bukowski
And it seems people should not build houses anymore it seems people should stop working and sit in small rooms on second floors under electric lights without shades; it seems there is a lot to forget and a lot not to do and in drugstores, markets, bars, the people are tired, they do not want to move, and I stand there at night and look through this house and the house does not want to be built

Charles Bukowski
That was all a man needed: hope. It was a lack of hope that discouraged a man. I remembered my New Orleans days, living on two five-cent candy bars a day for weeks at a time in order to have leisure to write. But starvation, unfortunately, didn't improve art. It only hindered it. A man's soul was rooted in his stomach. A man could write much better after eating a porterhouse steak and drinking a pint of whiskey than he could ever write after eating a nickel candy bar. The myth of the starving artist was a hoax.

Charles Bukowski
They laughed. Things were funny. They weren't afraid to care. There was no sense to life, to the structure of things.

Charles Bukowski
"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
From the beginning, through the middle years and up to the end: too bad, too bad, too bad.

Charles Bukowski
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
What a weary time those years were — to have the desire and the need to live but not the ability.

Charles Bukowski
I was naturally a loner, content just to live with a woman, eat with her, sleep with her, walk down the street with her. I didn't want conversation, or to go anywhere except the racetrack or the boxing matches. I didn't understand t.v. I felt foolish paying money to go into a movie theatre and sit with other people to share their emotions. Parties sickened me. I hated the game-playing, the dirty play, the flirting, the amateur drunks, the bores.

Charles Bukowski
Any damn fool can beg up some kind of job; it takes a wise man to make it without working.

Charles Bukowski
I'll get back to the whores and the horses and the booze, while there's time.

Charles Bukowski
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
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
Food is good for the nerves and the spirit. Courage comes from the belly – all else is desperation.

Charles Bukowski
Alcohol is probably one of the greatest things to arrive upon the earth - alongside of me.

Charles Bukowski
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
When I'm drinking around people, I tend to get silly or pugnacious or wild, which can cause problems.

Charles Bukowski
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
I pretend to understand because I don't want anybody to be hurt

Charles Bukowski
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
Some men never die and some men never live but we're all alive tonight.

Charles Bukowski
When I was young I was depressed all the time. But suicide no longer seemed a possibility in my life. At my age there was very little left to kill. It was good to be old, no matter what they said. It was reasonable that a man had to be at least 50 years old before he could write with anything like clarity.

Charles Bukowski
Places to hunt places to hide are getting harder to find, and pet canaries and goldfish too, did you notice that?

Charles Bukowski