Quotes from Charles Bukowski

I get 75 letters a month. If i answered them that's all I would ever do.

I've seen too many intellectuals lately. I get very tired of the precious intellects who must speak diamonds every time they open their mouths. I get tired of battling for each space of air for the mind. That's why I stayed away from people for so long, and now that I am meeting people, I find that I must return to my cave.

sometimes when everything seems at its worst when all conspires and gnaws and the hours, days, weeks years seem wasted-- stretched there upon my bed in the dark looking upward at the ceiling I get what many will consider an obnoxious thought: it's still nice to be Bukowski. -- Well, That's Just the Way it Is

Van Gogh cut off his ear gave it to a prostitute who flung it away in extreme disgust. Van, whores don't want ears they want money. I guess that's why you were such a great painter: you didn't understand much else.

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

I closed my eyes and listened to the waves. Thousands of fish out there, eating each other. Endless mouths and assholes swallowing and shitting. The whole earth was nothing but mouths and assholes swallowing and shitting, and fucking.

and you go on toward your ocean, the cigar biting your lips the way love used to.

When can I see you again?" "In 2 hours or tomorrow." I walked to the door. You walk like a poem," she said. "See you in 2 hours," I told her.

there seems to be no way out, I thought, everybody is always angry about the truth even though they claim to believe in it.

So tired you want to quit, then you get more tired, and forget to quit.

restless days and sleepless nights always fighting with all your heart and soul so as not to fail at living

We have wasted History like a bunch of drunks shooting dice back in the men's crapper of the local bar.

Cautiously, I allowed myself to feel good at times. I found moments of peace in…rooms just staring at the knobs of some dresser or listening to the rain in the dark. The less I needed the better I felt.

Just living until you die is hard work

She had chosen me and it was as simple as that.

Zemër, i thash, Unë jam një gjeni por askush nuk e di këtë, përpos unë.

My revolution is a one-man revolution and almost everybody is the enemy. I may not be doing a great deal of damage, but at least I'm not bullshitting.

I remember your saying: make it or break it. neither happened and it won't.

I would rather die than cry. I can't stand hounds can't live without them. I hang my head against the white refrigerator and want to scream like the last weeping of life forever but I am bigger than the mountains.

ambition rarely has anything to do with talent. Luck is best, and talent limps along a little bit behind luck.

The masses are always wrong - Wisdom is doing everything the crowd does not do. All you do is reverse the totality of their learning and you have the heaven they're looking for.

I think that people who keep notebooks and jot down their thoughts are jerk-offs. I am only doing this because somebody suggested I do it, so you see, I'm not even an original jerk-off. But this somehow makes it easier. I just let it roll. Like a hot turd down a hill.

I'm fucking the grave, I thought, I'm bringing the dead back to life, marvelous so marvelous like eating cold olives at 3 am with half the town on fire)

but what can I make of love when we are all born at a different time and place and only meet through a trick of centuries and a chance three steps to the left? you