Quotes from Charles Bukowski

You are thirty minutes late. Yes. Would you be thirty minutes late to a wedding or a funeral? No. Why not, pray tell? Well, if the funeral was mine I'd have to be on time. If the wedding was mine it would be my funeral.

having nothing to struggle against they have nothing to struggle for.

Dying should come easy: like a freight train you don't hear when your back is turned.

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.

To experience real agony is something hard to write about, impossible to understand while it grips you; you're frightened out of your wits, can't sit still, move, or even go decently insane.

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.

jan was an excellent fuck...she had a tight pussy and she took it like it was a knife that was killing her.

in this room the hours of love still make shadows.

I thought you were sane, I said, but you're just as crazy as the rest of them.

What's genius? I don't know but I do know that the difference between a madman and a professional is that a pro does as well as he can within what he has set out to do and a madman does exceptionally well at what he can't help doing.

I only want sweet peace and kindliness when I awaken -- but there's always some finger pointing, telling me some terrible deed I committed during the night. It seems I make a lot of mistakes and it seems that I am not allowed any.

I knew I was strong, and maybe like they said, crazy. But I had this feeling inside of me that something real was there.

there's nothing to discuss there's nothing to remember there's nothing to forget it's sad and it's not sad seems the most sensible thing a person can do is sit with drink in hand as the walls wave their goodbye smiles one comes through it all with a certain amount of efficiency and bravery then leaves some accept the possibility of God to help them get through others take it staight on and to these I drink tonight.

people diminish me; the longer I sit and listen to them the more empty I feel but I don't get the idea that they feel empty, I feel that they enjoy the sound from their mouths.

You have my soul and I have your money

It's so easy to be easy—if you let it.

we know God is dead, they've told us, but listening to you I wasn't sure.

You begin saving the world by saving one person at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.

we had such tremendous fun and much agony together for some years

It's a f*** you world. Well, keep it going anyhow, what the hell.

people are not good to each other. perhaps if they were our deaths would not be so sad.

People don't need love. What they need is success in one form or another. It can be love but it needn't be.

I pretend to understand because I don't want anybody to be hurt

News travels fast in places where nothing much ever happens.