Quotes from Charles Bukowski

We've all heard that little woman who says, "Oh, it's terrible what these young people do to themselves, in my lsi other drugs, is a terrible thing". Then you look, the woman who speaks in this way: you have no eyes, no teeth, no brains, no soul, no ass, no mouth, no warmth, no spirit, nothing, just a stick… and avran made ??you wonder how to reduce it in that state teas and pastries and the church.

I knew exactly what I was doing: I was doing nothing. because I knew there was nothing to do.

And if there is anybody out there who is crazy enough to want to become a writer, I'd say go ahead, spit in the eye of the sun, hit those keys, it's the best madness going, the centuries need help, the species cry for light and gamble and laughter. Give it to them. There are enough words for all of us.

that's ONE thing that's wrong with intellectuals and writers - they don't feel a hell of a lot except their own comfort or their own pain. which is normal but shitty.

When you play the field selfishly everything works against you: one can't insist on love or demand affection. you're finally left with whatever you have been willing to give which often is: nothing.

there are so many days when living stops and pulls up and sits and waits like a train on the rails.

Days like this, like your day today. maybe the rain on the window trying to get through to you. What do you see today? what is it? where are you? the best days are sometimes the first, sometimes the middle and even sometimes the last

the flesh covers the bone and they put a mind in there and sometimes a soul, and the women break vases against the walls and the men drink too much and nobody finds the one but keep looking crawling in and out of beds. flesh covers the bone and the flesh searches for more than flesh.

TV can make me ill in five minutes, but I can look at an animal for hours and find nothing but grace and glory, life as it should be.

I've learned to feel good when I feel good. it's better to be driven around in a red porsche than to own one. the luck of the fool is inviolate.

we waste days like mad blackbirds and pray for alcoholic nights our silk-sick human smiles wrap around us like somebody else's confetti

it's so easy to be a poet and so hard to be a man.

A writer is not a writer because he has written some books. A writer is not a writer because he teaches literature. A writer is only a writer if he can write now, tonight, this minute.

When I get down to my last dime I'll just walk over to skid row. There are some real weirdos down there. They're everywhere.

I sit on the couch watching her arrange her long red hair before my bedroom mirror. she pulls her hair up and piles it on top of her head- she lets her eyes look at my eyes- then she drops her hair and lets it fall down in front of her face. we go to bed and I hold her speechlessly from the back my arm around her neck I touch her wrists and hands feel up to her elbows no further.

What good are you? What can you do? It has cost me a thousands of dollars to raise you, feed you, clothe you! Suppose I left you here on the street? Then what would you do? Catch butterflies

Existence was not only absurd, it was plain hard work

madhouses are rarely on display.

I felt I had to win. It seemed very important. I didn't know why it was important and I kept thinking, why do I think this is so important? And another part of me answered, just because it is.

MAILMAN CAUGHT DRINKING THE BLOOD OF GOD AND TAKING A SHOWER, NAKED, IN ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH.

you are on the freeway threading through traffic now, moving both towards something and towards nothing at all as you punch the radio on and get Mozart, which is something, and you will somehow get through the slow days and the busy days and the dull days and the hateful days and the rare days, all both so delightful and so disappointing because we are all so alike and so different.

The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose, they sliced a little bit more off you, until there was nothing left… The others had some taste for life. They seemed to understand something that I didn't understand. Maybe I was lacking. It was possible. I often felt inferior. I just wanted to get away from them. But there was no place to go

don't be like so many writers, don't be like so many thousands of people who call themselves writers, don't be dull and boring and pretentious, don't be consumed with self- love. the libraries of the world have yawned themselves to sleep over your kind. don't add to that. don't do it.

You're afraid of the audience, aren't you? Yes, but it's not stagefright. It's that I'm there as the geek. They like to watch me eat my shit. But it pays the light bill and takes me to the racetrack. I don't have any excuses about why I do it.