Quotes from Charles Bukowski

my mother, poor fish, wanting to be happy, beaten two or three times a week, telling me to be happy: Henry, smile! why don't you ever smile? and then she would smile, to show me how, and it was the saddest smile I ever saw

in this land some of us fuck more than we die but most of us die better than we fuck

nothing can save you except writing. it keeps the walls from failing.

Human relationships didn't work anyhow. Only the first two weeks had any zing, then the participants lost their interest. Masks dropped away and real people began to appear: cranks, imbeciles, the demented, the vengeful, sadists, killers. Modern society had created its own kind and they feasted on each other. It was a duel to the death--in a cesspool.

so it's always a process of letting go, one way or another

she' mad but she' magic. there' no lie in her fire.

I said goodbye again sucking up all that was left of her into the little that was left of me. I said, 'don't look for me again. fuck it. we are all lost. goodbye, goodbye.

your letters got sadder. your lovers betrayed you. kid, I wrote back, all lovers betray. it didn't help. you said you had a crying bench and it was by a bridge and the bridge was over the river and you sat on the crying bench every night and wept for the lovers who had hurt and forgotten you.

I couldn't get myself to read the want ads. The thought of sitting in front of a man behind a desk and telling him that I wanted a job, that I was qualified for a job, was too much for me. Frankly, I was horrified by life, at what a man had to do simply in order to eat, sleep, and keep himself clothed. So I stayed in bed and drank. When you drank the world was still out there, but for the moment it didn't have you by the throat.

it was like any other relationship, there was jealousy on both sides, there were split-ups and reconciliations. there were also fragmented moments of great peace and beauty. I often tried to get away from her and she tied to get away from me but it was difficult: Cupid, in his strange way, was really there.

writers are desperate people and when they stop being desperate they stop being writers.

one can never be sure whether it's good poetry or bad acid

People empty me. I have to get away to refill.

Any asshole can chase a skirt, art takes discipline.

Now something so sad has hold of us that the breath leaves and we can't even cry.

If I never see you again I will always carry you inside outside on my fingertips and at brain edges and in centers centers of what I am of what remains.

Learn, he says, that there will be hours, days and months ahead of feeling absolutely terrible and nothing can change that; neither new girlfriends, health professionals, changes of diet, dope, humility, or God.

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.

whiskey makes the heart beat faster but it sure doesn't help the mind and isn't it funny how you can ache just from the deadly drone of existence?

to fight for each minute is to fight for what is possible within yourself, so that your life and your death will not be like theirs.

and you invented me and I invented you and that's why we don't get along on this bed any longer. you were the world's greatest invention until you flushed me away. now it's your turn to wait for the touch of the handle. somebody will do it to you, bitch, and if they don't you will - mixed with your own green or yellow or white or blue or lavender goodbye.

Goodness can be found sometimes in the middle of hell.

Nothing is worse than to finish a good shit, then reach over and find the toilet paper container empty. Even the most horrible human being on earth deserves to wipe his ass.

In my next life I want to be a cat. To sleep 20 hours a day and wait to be fed. To sit around licking my ass.