Quotes from Charles Bukowski

Shakespeare didn't work at all for me.

What my character is or how many jails I have lounged in, or wards or walls or wassails, how many lonely-heart poetry readings I have dodged, is beside the point. A man's soul or lack of it will be evident with what he can carve upon a white sheet of paper.

The worst men have the best jobs the best men have the worst jobs or are unemployed or locked in madhouses.

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.

To me Art (poetry) is a continuous and continuing process and that when a man fails to write good poetry he fails to live fully or well.

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

A woman must be nursed into subsistence by love, where a man can become stronger by being hated." - from 'Cows in Art Class

Each man's hell is in a different place: mine is just up and behind my ruined face.

The poet, as a rule, is a half-man - a sissy, not a real person, and he is in no shape to lead real men in matters of blood, or courage.

I would give anything for a female's hand on me tonight. they soften a man and then leave him listening to the rain.

A man who can beat the horses can do anything he makes up his mind to do.

like the fox I run with the hunted and if I'm not the happiest man on earth I'm surely the luckiest man alive.

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

the writing of some men is like a vast bridge that carries you over the many things that claw and tear. The Wine of Forever

for a man of 55 who didn't get laid until he was 23 and not very often until he was 50 I think that I should stay listed via Pacific Telephone until I get as much as the average man has had

I've found out why men sign their names to their works- not that they created them but more than the others did not.

…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.

Experience can dull. With most men experience is a series of mistakes; the more experience you have the less you know.

Writing is like going to bed with a beautiful woman and afterwards she gets up, goes to her purse and gives me a handful of money.

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

You have my soul and I have your money

I remember awakening one morning and finding everything smeared with the color of forgotten love.

I don't know about other people, but when I wake up in the morning and put my shoes on, I think, Jesus Christ, now what?

I don't remember going to bed, but in the morning, there I was.