Quotes from Charles Bukowski

Humanity, you never had it from the beginning." That was my motto.

Sometimes you just have to pee in the sink.

Your writing", she said to me, "it's so raw. It's like a sledgehammer, and yet it has humor and tenderness. . . .

the free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it - basically because you feel good, very good, when you are near or with them.

The less I needed, the better I felt.

The writer has no responsibility other than to jack off in bed alone and write a good page.

There's a light somewhere.It may not be much light butit beats the darkness.

be it peace or happinesslet it enfold you

Isolation is a gift. Everything else is just a test of your endurance. You will be alone with the Gods. Your nights will flame with fire.

An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.

Genius might be the ability to say a profound thing in a simple way.

I don't like the clean-shaven boy with the necktie and the good job. I like desperate men, men with broken teeth and broken minds and broken ways. They interest me. They are full of surprises and explosions.

The world had somehow gone too far, and spontaneous kindness could never be so easy.

The female loves to play man against man. And if she is in a position to do it, there is not one who will resist.

I don't write so much now. I'm getting on 33, pot belly and creeping dementia.

There will always be something to ruin our lives, it all depends on what or which finds us first. We are always ripe and ready to be taken.

People are strange: They are constantly angered by trivial things, but on a major matter like totally wasting their lives, they hardly seem to notice.

You have to die a few times before you can really live.

It's possible to love a human being if you don't know them too well.

Censorship is the tool of those who have the need to hide actualities from themselves and from others. Their fear is only their inability to face what is real, and I can't vent any anger against them; I only feel this appalling sadness. Somewhere in their upbringing, they were shielded against the total facts of our existence.

I wish to weep but sorrow is stupid. I wish to believe but belief is a graveyard.

people are not good to each other. perhaps if they were our deaths would not be so sad.

I was a bore and didn't know when to smile or fake it. Or rather worse, I did but didn't.

If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start.