Quotes from Charles Bukowski

I often carry things to read so that I will not have to look at the people.

Lighting new cigarettes, pouring more drinks. It has been a beautiful fight. Still is.

Things get bad for all of us, almost continually, and what we do under the constant stress reveals who/what we are.

she was consumed by 3 simple things: drink, despair, loneliness; and 2 more: youth and beauty

Without literature, life is hell.

some moments are nice, some are nicer, some are even worth writing about.

I was a man who thrived on solitude; without it I was like another man without food or water. Each day without solitude weakened me. I took no pride in my solitude; but I was dependent on it. The darkness of the room was like sunlight to me.

It wasn't my day. My week. My month. My year. My life. God damn it.

This is very important -- to take leisure time. Pace is the essence. Without stopping entirely and doing nothing at all for great periods, you're gonna lose everything...just to do nothing at all, very, very important. And how many people do this in modern society? Very few. That's why they're all totally mad, frustrated, angry and hateful.

dogs and angels are not very far apart

in that drunken place you would like to hand your heart to her and say touch it but then give it back.

She was desperate and she was choosey at the same time and, in a way, beautiful, but she didn't have quite enough going for her to become what she imagined herself to be.

And yet women-good women--frightened me because they eventually wanted your soul, and what was left of mine, I wanted to keep.

there's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I'm too clever, I only let him out at night sometimes when everybody's asleep. I say, I know that you're there, so don't be sad. then I put him back, but he's singing a little in there, I haven't quite let him die and we sleep together like that with our secret pact and it's nice enough to make a man weep, but I don't weep, do you?

There are times when those eyes inside your brain stare back at you.

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

Great art is horseshit, buy tacos.

How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 8:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?

I sit here drunk now. I am a series of small victories and large defeats and I am as amazed as any other that I have gotten from there to here without committing murder or being murdered; without having ended up in the madhouse. as I drink alone again tonight my soul despite all the past agony thanks all the gods who were not there for me then.

I drive around the streets an inch away from weeping, ashamed of my sentimentality and possible love.

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 want so much that is not here and do not know where to go.

Too often the people complain that they have done nothing with their lives and then they wait for somebody to tell them that this isn't so.

I'm going, she said. I love you but you're crazy, you're doomed.