Quotes from Charles Bukowski

for me obedience to another is the decay of self

I've never met another man I'd rather be.

Anything, anything to stop drowning in this dull, trivial and cowardly existence.

Have you ever been in love? Love is for real people.

I'd decided the campus was just a place to hide. There were some campus freaks who stayed on forever. The whole college scene was soft. They never told you what to expect out there in the real world. They just crammed you with theory and never told you how hard the pavements were. A college education could destroy an individual for life. Books could make you soft. When you put them down, and really went out there, then you needed to know what they never told you.

You can shoot a barracuda between the eyes and it won't go to hell because it doesn't know where or what hell is...)

that your power of command with simple language was one of the magnificent things of our century. (from the poem: result)

I got the sad sads and all I want to do is fuck you.

you fall into the mirror, come through the other side staring at a lightbulb.

I can see where creation often stops while the body still lives and often does not care to. the death of life before life dies.

Experience can dull. With most men experience is a series of mistakes; the more experience you have the less you know.

I was alone with myself. And disgusting as I was it was better than being with somebody else, anybody else, all of them out there doing their pitiful little tricks and handsprings.

She drove with the throttle to the floor and took the curves sliding and screeching and without expression. That was class. If she loved like she drove it was going to be a hell of a night.

when I drive the freeways I see the soul of humanity of my city and it's ugly, ugly, ugly: the living have choked the heart away.

Often the best parts of life were when you weren't doing anything at all, just mulling it over, chewing on it. 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? And optimistic pessimism.

There's nothing like privacy. You know, I like people. It's nice that they might like my books and all that...but I'm not the book, see? I'm the guy who wrote it, but I don't want them to come up and throw roses on me or anything. I want them to let me breathe.

the impossibility of being human all too human this breathing in and out out and in these punks these cowards these champions these mad dogs of glory moving this little bit of light toward us impossibly.

I hated you when it would have taken less courage to love.

the sea is made of blood

I've found out why men sign their names to their works- not that they created them but more than the others did not.

I like to prowl ordinary places. I feel sorry for us all or glad for us all caught alive together and awkward in that way. there's nothing better than the joke of us the seriousness of us the dullness of us

Sometimes things are just what they seem to be and that's all there is to it. The best interpreter of the dream is the dreamer.

for me obedience to another is the decay of self. for though every being is similar each being is different and to herd our differences under one law degrades each self.

Then I gave up trying to please her and simply fucked her, ripping viciously. It was like murder. I didn't care; my cock had gone crazy.