Quotes from Charles Bukowski

I am not a snob; it is simply that I am not interested with what most people have to say, or what they want to do — mostly with my time.

we must bring our own light to the darkness.

Everything you own must be able to fit inside one suitcase; then your mind might be free.

Somebody at one of these places asked me: What do you do? How do you write, create? You don't, I told them. You don't try. That's very important: not to try, either for Cadillacs, creation or immortality. You wait, and if nothing happens, you wait some more. It's like a bug high on the wall. You wait for it to come to you. When it gets close enough you reach out, slap out and kill it. Or if you like it's looks, you make a pet out of it.

the soul has no skin; the soul only has insides that want to sing, finally, can't you hear it, brothers? softly, can't you hear it, brothers? a hot piece of ass and a new Cadillac ain't going to solve a god-damned thing.

Baby, in a couple of minutes I'm going to rip off your god damned panties and show you some turkey neck you'll remember all the way to the graveside. I have a vast and curved penis, like a sickle, and many a gutted pussy has gasped come upon my callous and roach-smeared rug. First let me finish this drink.

I wasn't going anywhere and neither was the rest of the world. We were all just hanging around waiting to die and meanwhile doing little things to fill the space. Some of use weren't even doing little things. We were vegetables.

Never get out of bed before noon.

There is no hurry. Time means nothing to you.

There is a loneliness in this world so great that you can see it in the slow movement of the hands of a clock.

we sat there smoking cigarettes at 5 in the morning.

But then if you lied to a man about his talent just because he was sitting across from you, that was the most unforgivable lie of them all, because that was telling him to go on, to continue which was the worst way for a man without real talent to waste his life, finally. But many people did just that, friends and relatives mostly.

I was only photographing in words the reality of it all.

Where did all the women come from? The supply was endless. Each one of them was individual, different. Their pussies were different, their kisses were different, their breasts were different, but no man could drink them all, there were too many of them, crossing their legs, driving men mad. What a feast!

the beautiful are found in the edge of a room crumpled into spiders and needles and silence and we can never understand why they left,they were so beautiful. they dont make it, the beautiful die young and leave the ugly to their ugly lives.

but isn't there always one good thing to look back on? think of how many cups of coffee we drank together.

To be young is the only religion.

sometimes it's hard to know what to do.

There's nothing to mourn about death any more than there is to mourn about the growing of a flower. What is terrible is not death but the lives people live or don't live up until their death.

Turgenev was a very serious fellow but he could make me laugh because a truth first encountered can be very funny. When someone else's truth is the same as your truth, and he seems to be saying it just for you, that's great.

and our few good times will be rare because we have the critical sense and are not easy to fool with laughter

I am this fiery snail crawling home.

I always started a job with the feeling that I'd soon quit or be fired, and this gave ma a relaxex manner that was mistaken for intelligence or some secret power.

I feel no grief for being called something which I am not; in fact, it's enthralling, somehow, like a good back rub