Quotes from Charles Bukowski

Almost everyone is born a genius and buried an idiot.

If you want to know where God is, ask a drunk.

Knowledge without follow-through is worse than no knowledge at all. because if you're guessing and it doesn't work out you can just say, shit, the gods are against me. but if you know and don't do, you've got attics and dark halls in your mind to walk up and down in and wonder about. this ain't healthy, leads to unpleasant evenings, too much to drink and the shredding machine.

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

In New York you've got to have all the luck.

There is nothing as boring as the truth.

Some men hope for revolution but when you revolt and set up your new government you find your new government is still the same old Papa, he has only put on a cardboard mask.

Courts are places where the ending is written first and all that precedes is simply vaudeville.

Revolution sounds very romantic, you know, but it ain't. it's blood and guts and madness; it's little kids killed who get in the way, it's little kids who don't understand what the fuck is going on. it's your whore, your wife ripped in the belly with a bayonet and then raped in the a** while you watch. it's men torturing men who used to laugh at Mickey Mouse cartoons.

The ladies usually go for the biggest damn fool they can find; that is why the human race stands where it does today: we have bred the clever and lasting Casanovas, all hollow inside, like the chocolate Easter bunnies we foster upon our poor children.

A woman has to have something on or there's nothing to take off.

There is something about writing poetry that brings a man close to the cliff's edge.

The public takes from a writer, or a writing, what it needs and lets the remainder go. but what they take is usually what they need least and what they let go is what they need most.

Sex is interesting but not totally important. I mean, it's not even as important (physically) as excretion. a man can go 70 years without a piece of ass but he can die in a week without a bowel movement.

Sex can sometimes become the most horrible of tasks.

An intellectual is a man who says a simple thing in a difficult way; an artist is a man who says a difficult thing is a simple way.

I stopped looking for a Dream Girl, I just wanted one that wasn't a nightmare.

There is nothing more boring than the truth.

I never met another man I'd rather be. And even if that's a delusion, it's a lucky one.

I wasn't a misanthrope and I wasn't a misogynist but I liked being alone. It felt good to sit alone in a small space and smoke and drink. I had always been good company for myself.

I don't hate people. I just feel better when they aren't around.

Bad taste creates many more millionaires than good taste.

To do a dull thing with style-now that's what I call art.

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