Quotes from Charles Bukowski

they pulled Ezra through the streets in a wooden cage. Blake was sure of God. Villon was a mugger. Lorca sucked cock. T. S. Eliot worked a teller's cage

Your parents don't give you much love, do they?' 'I don't need that stuff,' I told her. 'Henry, everybody needs love.' 'I don't need anything.' 'You poor boy.

sometimes you die sometimes you don't.

beware of those that seek constant crowds. they are nothing alone.

There is only one place to write and that is alone at a typewriter. A writer who has to go into the streets is a writer who does not know the streets.

I could stay here, I thought, make money at the track while she nurses me over the bad moments, rubs oil on my body, cooks for me, talks to me, goes to bed with me. Of course, there would always be arguments. That is the nature of a woman. They like the mutual exchange of dirty laundry, a bit of screaming, a bit of dramatics. Then an exchange of vows.

death is walking up and down this room smoking my cigars taking hits of my wine

there's no release, just gurus and self- appointed gods and hucksters. the more people say, the less there is to say.

When I went to the Yellow Cab Company I passed the Cancer Building and I remembered that there were worse things than looking for a job you didn't want.

the grace is being able to like rock music, symphony music, jazz … anything that contains the original energy of joy.

What were you going to do tonight? I was going to listen to the songs of Rachmaninoff. Who's that? A dead Russian.

There is light somewhere.

That's the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.

But you know, only boring people get bored. They have to prod themselves continually in order to feel alive.

Of course, there would always be arguments. That is the nature of Woman. They like the mutual exchange of dirty laundry, a bit of screaming, a bit of dramatics. Then an exchange of vows.

there's no defense except all the errors made

you shoulda known the entirety of the trap, a**hole, love means eventual pain victory means eventual defeat grace means eventual slovenliness, there's no way out...you see, you understand?

Love is a horse with a broken leg trying to stand while 45,000 people watch.

Yet for all that I have had more joy than any of them, they were positive and depressed, and I am negative and happy.

did you ever consider that lsd and color TV arrived for our consumption around the same time? Here comes all this explorative color pounding, and what do we do? we outlaw one and fuck up the other.

one of Lorca's best lines is, "agony, always agony…" think of this when you kill a cockroach or pick up a razor to shave or awaken in the morning to face the sun.

Our source is private. So are your parts but you can expose them.

LSD, yeah, the big parade – everybody's doin' it now. Take LSD, then you are a poet, an intellectual. What a sick mob. I am building a machine gun in my closet now to take out as many of them as I can before they get me.

they are unhappy with what I have become