Quotes from Charles Bukowski

When you clean up a city, you destroy it.

mercy, I think, doesn't the human race know anything about mercy?

she wasn't very interesting but few people are.

Humanity, you never had it from the beginning. That was my motto.

I was their bar freak, they needed me to make themselves feel better. just like, at times, I needed that graveyard.

Never trust a man in a jumpsuit

it doesn't matter if Prince Charles falls off his horse or that the hummingbird is so seldom seen or that we are too senseless to go insane. coffee. give us more of that NOTHING coffee.

I mean, say that you figure that everything is senseless, then it can't be quite senseless because you are aware that it's senseless and your awareness of senselessness almost gives it sense. You know what I mean?

A yet women -good women- frightened me because they eventually wanted your soul, and what was left of mine, I wanted to keep. Basically I craved prostitutes, base women, because they were deadly and hard and made no personal demands. Nothing was lost when they left. Yet at the same time I yearned for a gentle, good woman, despite the overwhelming price.

and love was lightning and remembrance

and even the trees we walked under seemed less than trees and more like everything else.

there's no clarity. there was never meant to be clarity.

Gradually I came to realize that my understanding of women goes only as far as the pleasure is concerned.

Censorship is the tool of those who have the need to hide actualities from themselves and from others. Their fear is only their inability to face what is real, and I can't vent any anger against them. I only feel this appalling sadness. Somewhere, in their upbringing, they were shielded against the total facts of our existence. They were only taught to look one way when many ways exist.

The wisdom to quit is all we have left.

Many a good man has been put under the bridge by a woman.

You just rebel against everything. How are you going to survive? I don't know. I'm already tired.

The night kept coming on in and there was nothing I could do.

the whole world is caught in her glance and at last the universe is magnificent.

Whores are natural

they say that nothing is wasted: either that or it al is

People don't do me much good.

darkness falls upon Humanity and faces become terrible things that wanted more than there was. all our days are marked with unexpected affronts - some disastrous, others less so but the process is wearing and continuous. attrition rules. most give way leaving empty spaces where people should be. and now as we ready to self-destruct there is very little left to kill which makes the tragedy less and more much much more.

Why do you insist upon destroying yourself?