Quotes from Charles Bukowski

Show me a man who lives alone and has a perpetually clean kitchen, and 8 times out of 9 I'll show you a man with detestable spiritual qualities.

The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later in a dictatorship you don't have to waste your time voting.

I carry death in my left pocket. Sometimes I take it out and talk to it: "Hello, baby, how you doing? When you coming for me? I'll be ready.

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.

Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I'm not going to make it, but you laugh inside — remembering all the times you've felt that way.

Life's as kind as you let it be.

It was a joy! Words weren't dull, words were things that could make your mind hum. If you read them and let yourself feel the magic, you could live without pain, with hope, no matter what happened to you.

Bobby handed me a Columbian and I took a hit.

The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubt, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.

Do you hate people?" "I don't hate them...I just feel better when they're not around.

Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I'm not going to make it, but you laugh inside — remembering all the times you've felt that way.

We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.

You have to die a few times before you can really live.

The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.

My ambition is handicapped by laziness

That's the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.

I wanted the whole world or nothing.

An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.

there are worse things than being alone but it often takes decades to realize this and most often when you do it's too late and there's nothing worse than too late

I loved you like a man loves a woman he never touches, only writes to, keeps little photographs of.

Real loneliness is not necessarily limited to when you are alone.

being alone never felt right. sometimes it felt good, but it never felt right.

I will remember the kisses our lips raw with love and how you gave me everything you had and how I offered you what was left of me, and I will remember your small room the feel of you the light in the window your records your books our morning coffee our noons our nights our bodies spilled together sleeping the tiny flowing currents immediate and forever your leg my leg your arm my arm your smile and the warmth of you who made me laugh again.

I felt like crying but nothing came out. it was just a sort of sad sickness, sick sad, when you can't feel any worse. I think you know it. I think everybody knows it now and then. but I think I have known it pretty often, too often.