Charles Bukowski Quotes

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

  Charles Bukowski

  Charles Bukowski (2009). “Women: A Novel”, p.3, Harper Collins

  634

• Everything was a trap: women, drugs, whiskey, wine, scotch, beer - even beer - cigars, and cigarettes. Traps: Work or no work. Traps: Artistry or no artistry; everything sucked you into some spiderweb. I disdained the use of the needle for the same reason that I disdained some so-called beautiful women - the price was far beyond the measure of the worth. I didn't want to hustle that hard.

  Charles Bukowski

  Charles Bukowski (2008). “Charles Bukowski: portions from a wine-stained notebook : uncollected stories and essays, 1944-1990”, City Lights Publishers

  1505

• There's nothing like privacy. You know, I like people. It's nice that they might like my books and all that...but I'm not the book, see? I'm the guy who wrote it, but I don't want them to come up and throw roses on me or anything. I want them to let me breathe.

  Charles Bukowski

  2806

• 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

  Charles Bukowski (2007). “Come On In!: New Poems”, p.268, Canongate Books

  1360

• but as God said, crossing his legs, I see where I have made plenty of poets but not so very much poetry.

  Charles Bukowski

  Charles Bukowski (2016). “On Love”, p.16, Canongate Books

  851

• Are people crazy? People waited all their lives. They waited to live, they waited to die. They waited in line to buy toilet paper. They waited in line for money. And if they didn't have any money they waited in longer lines. You waited to go to sleep and then you waited to awaken. You waited to get married and you waited to get divorced. You waited for it to rain, you waited for it to stop. You waited to eat and then you waited to eat again. You waited in a shrink's office with a bunch of psychos and you wondered if you were one.

  Charles Bukowski

  4222

• We are here to laugh at the odds.

  Charles Bukowski

  "The Meaning of Life: The Big Picture". Life Magazine, December 1988.

  2088

• Early evening traffic was beginning to clog the avenue with cars. The sun slanted down behind him. Harry glanced at the drivers of the cars. They seemed unhappy. The world was unhappy. People were in the dark. People were terrified and disappointed. People were caught in traps. People were defensive and frantic. They felt as if their lives were being wasted. And they were right.

  Charles Bukowski

  648

• And if there is anybody out there who is crazy enough to want to become a writer, I'd say go ahead, spit in the eye of the sun, hit those keys, it's the best madness going, the centuries need help, the species cry for light and gamble and laughter. Give it to them. There are enough words for all of us.

  Charles Bukowski

  3936

• If you're going to try, go all the way. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives, jobs and maybe your mind.

  Charles Bukowski

  2953

• People who believe in politics are like people who believe in God: they are sucking wind through bent straws.

  Charles Bukowski

  2412

• 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

  Charles Bukowski, “The Crunch”

  2231

• The streets were full of insane & dull people. Most of them lived in nice houses and didn't seem to work, and you wondered how they did it.

  Charles Bukowski

  2718

• The masses are always wrong...Wisdom is doing everything the crowd does not do. All you do is reverse the totality of their learning and you have the heaven they're looking for.

  Charles Bukowski

  4935

• I was beaten down long ago in some alley in another world.

  Charles Bukowski

  Charles Bukowski (2012). “The Pleasures of the Damned: Selected Poems 1951-1993”, p.103, Canongate Books

  433

• What's genius? I don't know but I do know that the difference between a madman and a professional is that a pro does as well as he can within what he has set out to do and a madman does exceptionally well at what he can't help doing.

  Charles Bukowski

  980

• Most people's deaths are a sham. There's nothing left to die.

  Charles Bukowski

  Charles Bukowski (2009). “The Captain is Out to Lunch”, p.13, Harper Collins

  5074

• It’s when you hide things that you choke on them.

  Charles Bukowski

  Charles Bukowski (2008). “Charles Bukowski: portions from a wine-stained notebook : uncollected stories and essays, 1944-1990”, City Lights Publishers

  5022

• A woman is a full time job. You have to choose your profession.

  Charles Bukowski

  3639

• I walk into the kitchen, look at the typer down there on the floor. It's a dirty floor. It's a dirty typer that types dirty stories

  Charles Bukowski

  3565

• Don't wait for the good woman. She doesn't exist.

  Charles Bukowski

  "Charles Bukowski: Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life". Book by Howard Sounes, 1998.

  2286

• the masses are everywhere they know how to do things: they have sane and deadly angers for sane and deadly things.

  Charles Bukowski

  4463

• I like women who haven’t lived with too many men. I don’t expect virginity but I simply prefer women who haven’t been rubbed raw by experience. There is a quality about women who choose men sparingly; it appears in their walk in their eyes in their laughter and in their gentle hearts. Women who have had too many men seem to choose the next one out of revenge rather than with feeling. When you play the field selfishly everything works against you: one can’t insist on love or demand affection. You’re finally left with whatever you have been willing to give which often is: nothing.

  Charles Bukowski

  795

• Love is a Dog from Hell.

  Charles Bukowski

  1977 Title of book.

  4706

• alone with everybody the flesh covers the bone and they put a mind in there and sometimes a soul, and the women break vases against the walls and them men drink too much and nobody finds the one but they keep looking crawling in and out of beds. flesh covers the bone and the flesh searches for more than flesh. there's no chance at all: we are all trapped by a singular fate. nobody ever finds the one. the city dumps fill the junkyards fill the madhouses fill the hospitals fill the graveyards fill nothing else fills.

  Charles Bukowski

  Charles Bukowski, “Alone With Everybody”

  1663

• 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

  845

• I am a series of small victories and large defeats.

  Charles Bukowski

  3080

• I didn't like parties.I didn't know how to dance and people frightened me, especially people at parties. They attempted to be sexy and gay and witty and although they hoped they were good at it, they weren 't. They were bad at it. Their trying so hard only made it worse.

  Charles Bukowski

  3077

• To me, nudity is a joke. I don't think nude people are very attractive at all. I like my women fully clothed. I like to imagine what might be under there. It might not be the standard thing. Imagine, stripping a woman down, and she has a body like a little submarine. With periscope, propellers, torpedoes. That would be the one for me. I'd marry her right off and be faithful to the end.

  Charles Bukowski

  3503

• I was fairly poor but most of my money went for wine and classical music. I loved to mix the two together.

  Charles Bukowski

  422

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