Quotes from Charles Bukowski

It's when you hide things that you choke on them.

A good writer knew when not to write. Anybody could type. Not that I was a good typist; also I couldn't spell and I didn't know grammar. But I knew when not to write. It was like fucking. You had to rest the godhead now and then.

I went to the bathroom and threw some water on my face, combed my hair. If I could only comb that face, I thought, but I can't.

magic persists without us no matter what we may do to try to spoil it

She Speaks Of Love

One more drink and you're dead. This is no way to talk to a suicide head.

I had no Freedom. I had nothing.

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.

well, i don't know about you but I'm going to try everything! War, women, travel, marriage, children, the works. [...]. I want to know about things, what makes them work!

Animals are inspirational. They don't know how to lie. They are natural forces.

there is a place in the heart that will never be filled

I'll use the knives for spreading jam, and the gas to warm my greying love.

Whether I was a genius or not did not so much concern me as the fact that I simply did not want a part of anything. The animal-drive and energy of my fellow man amazed me: that a man could change tires all day long or drive an ice cream truck or run for Congress or cut into a man's guts in surgery or murder, this was all beyond me. I did not want to begin. I still don't. Any day I that I could cheat away from this system of living seemed a good victory for me.

Women wanted men who made money, women wanted men of mark. How many classy women were living with skid row bums? Well, I didn't want a woman anyhow. Not to live with. How could men live with women? What did it mean? What I wanted was a cave in Colorado with three years' worth of foodstuffs and drink. I'd wipe my ass with sand. Anything, anything to stop drowning in this dull, trivial and cowardly existence.

I am too sick to lay down the sidewalks frighten me the whole damned city frightens me, what I will become what I have become frightens me.

and now sometimes I'm interviewed, they want to hear about life and literature and I get drunk and hold up my cross-eyed, shot, runover de-tailed cat and I say,look, look at this! but they don't understand, they say something like,you say you've been influenced by Celine? no, I hold the cat up,by what happens, by things like this, by this, by this!

love needs too much help, he said. hate takes care of itself.

Why do you haggle your beauty?" I asked. "Why don't you just live with it?" "Because people think it's all I have. Beauty is nothing, beauty won't stay. You don't know how lucky you are to be ugly, because if people like you you know it's for something else.

I'm tired of waiting to die. Let's go out.

I look at her and light goes all through me.

I went home each night dizzy and sick. He was murdering me with the sound of his voice.

the people are the biggest horror show on earth, have been for centuries.

You were destroyed by what you befriended.

Don't you go to the movies? Mostly just to eat popcorn in the dark.