Quotes from Charles Bukowski

All a guy needed was a chance. Somebody was alway controlling who got a chance and who didn't.

I take much pleasure in being alone but there is also a strange warm grace in not being alone.

He was always high on drugs. I was not a drug man, but in case I wanted to hide from myself for a few days, I knew I could get anything I wanted from him.

as long as there are human beings about there is never going to be any peace for any individual upon this earth (or anywhere else they might escape to). all you can do is maybe grab ten lucky minutes here or maybe an hour there. something is working toward you right now, and I mean you and nobody but you.

And I said to myself that he was the first thing that I had ever missed in my life.

love iz a big fat turkey and every day iz thanksgiving

I just let it roll. Like a hot turd down a hill.

the masses are everywhere they know how to do things: they have sane and deadly angers for sane and deadly things.

My flesh looked like it wasn't trying. It looked like it hated being part of me.

It's all overrated, man. Sex is only a great thing if you're not getting any.

Joan of Arc had style. Jesus had style.

the gods play no favorites.

according to my figures I've only had 2500 pieces of ass but I've watched 12500 horse races, and if I have any advice to anybody, it's this: take up watercolor painting.

The whole world is a sack of shit ripping open. I can´t save it.

Someday," I told Jan, "when they demonstrate that the world has four dimensions instead of just three, a man will be able to go for a walk and just disappear. No burial, no tears, no illusions, no heaven or hell. People will be sitting around and they'll say, 'What happened to George?' And somebody will say, 'Well, I don't know. He said he was going out for a pack of cigarettes.

I was getting depressed. My life wasn't going anywhere. I needed something, the flashing of lights, glamour, some damn thing. And here I was, talking to the dead. I finished my first drink. The second was ready.

it is good to be sitting some place in public at 2:30 in the afternoon without getting the flesh ripped from your bones.

I have loved you woman as surely as I have named you rust and sand and nylon.

Let' em learn or let' em die

I was glad I wasn't in love, that I wasn't happy with the world. I like being at odds with everything. People in love often become edgy, dangerous. They lose their sense of perspective.

I was feeling unfulfilled and, frankly, rather crappy about everything. 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 us weren't even doing little things.

I could scream down 90 mountains to less than dust if only one living human had eyes in the head and heart in the body, but there is no chance, my god, no chance. rat with rat dog with dog hog with hog, play the piano drunk listen to the drunk piano, realize the myth of mercy stand still as even a child's voice snarls and we have not been fooled, it was only that we wanted to believe.

it is so dark now with the sadness of people they were tricked, they were taught to expect the ultimate when nothing is promised now young girls weep alone in small rooms old men angrily swing their canes at visions as ladies comb their hair as ants search for survival history surrounds us and our lives slink away in shame.

human relationships simply aren't durable. I think back to the women in my life. they seem non-existent.