Quotes from Charles Bukowski

I guess we often get the deep blues, both of us, and wonder what it all means- the people, the buildings, the day by day things, the waste of time, of ourselves.

It's hard to drink when you dance. And it's hard to dance when you drink.

She was desperate and she was choosey at the same time and, in a way, beautiful, but she didn't have quite enough going for her to become what she imagined herself to be.

I believe that to be the world's greatest living writer there must be something terribly wrong with you. I don't even want to be the world's greatest dead writer. just being dead would be fair enough.

Well it's good to have a car like that, once in a while somebody'll say, 'why don't you come over for dinner?' and I can just say, 'Car won't make it.' I don't have to tell them that time is scarcer than young pussy around here, and I don't mean time to write POETRY. I mean time to lay in bed, alone, and stare up at the ceiling and not think at all, not at all, not at all…

there is a place in the heart that will never be filled a space and even during the best moments and the greatest times we will know it we will know it more than ever there is a place that will never be filled and we will wait and wait in that space.

Genius could be the ability to say a profound thing in a simple way, or even to say a simple thing in a simpler way.

and if I have any advice to give to anybody it's this: take up watercolor painting.

beware those quick to praise for they need praise in return beware those who are quick to censor they are afraid of what they do not know beware those who seek constant crowds for they are nothing alone beware the average man the average woman beware their love, their love is average seeks average

Drink from the well of yourself and begin again.

nothing's news. it's the same old thing in disguise. only one thing comes without a disguise and you only see it once, or maybe never. like getting hit by a freight train. makes us realize that all our moaning about long lost girls in gingham dresses is not so important after all.

I will always carry you, inside, outside, on my fingertips, and at brain edges.

yes, Wagner and the storm intermix with the wine as nights like this run up my wrists and up into my head and back down into the gut

I like to prowl ordinary places and taste the people- from a distance.

from the beginning, through the middle years and up to the end: too bad, too bad, too bad.

I'm sorry, you see, I have no sense of direction. I've always had nightmares about getting lost. I believe I belong on another planet.

soon I'll finish this 5th of Puerto Rican rum. in the morning I'll vomit and shower, drive back in, have a sandwich by 1 p.m., be back in my room by 2, stretched on the bed, waiting for the phone to ring, not answering, my holiday is an evasion, mt reasoning is not.

most days go nowhere but the avoidance of pain and dissolution are lovely.

How are his poems? He's not as good as he thinks he is, but then most of us feel that way.

nobody can save you but yourself. you will be put again and again into nearly impossible situations. they will attempt again and again through subterfuge, guise and force to make you submit, quit and/or die quietly inside. nobody can save you but yourself

Once a woman turns against you, forget it. They can love you, then something turns in them. They can watch you dying in a gutter, run over by a car, and they'll spit on you.

There's nothing unusual about love.

They looked as if nothing had ever touched them--all well-mothered, protected, with a soft sheen of contentment. None of them had ever been in jail, or worked hard with their hands, or even gotten a traffic ticket. Skimmed-milk jollies, the whole bunch.

She seemed a bit crazy but I kept looking at her body and I didn't care.