Quotes from Charles Bukowski

New Year's Eve always terrifies me life knows nothing of years. now the horns have stopped and the firecrackers and the thunder… it's all over in five minutes… all I hear is the rain on the palm leaves, and I think, I will never understand men, but I have lived it through.

Everywhere, Everywhere amazing, how grimly we hold onto our misery, ever defensive, thwarted by the forces. amazing, the energy we burn fueling our anger. amazing, how one moment we can be snarling like a beast, then a few moments later, forgetting what or why. not hours of this or days or months or years of this but decades, lifetimes completely use up, given over to the prettiest rancor and hatred. finally there is nothing here for death to take away.

The place trembled with sound. I didn't need to do anything. They would do it all. But you had to be careful. Drunk as they were they could immediately detect any false gesture, any false word. You could never underestimate an audience. They had paid to get in; they had paid for drinks; they intended to get something and if you didn't give it to them they'd run you right into the ocean.

Van Gogh writing his brother for paints Hemingway testing his shotgun Celine going broke as a doctor of medicine the impossibility of being human

it's not the large things that send a man to the madhouse. death he's ready for, or murder, incest, robbery, fire, flood … no, it's the continuing series of small tragedies that send a man to the madhouse …

If I could only make her fall in love with me. Pretend to be a writer and just fuck her and have her cook for me. I would never have to write I'd just pretend.

dear J: I feel lucky that I didn't fuck you the first time we met in Houston, but luckier that I didn't fuck you the last time we met in San Francisco. this is the answer to your letter even though I don't know if you'll ever read it. the words are yours but I'll get credit for the poem. you see, it could never have worked, the way I am. B.

When Ginsburg is at the top of his game you might as well put down your toys and listen.

They, all of them, seemed to put literary form in front of the actuality and living of life itself.

I am a series of small victories and large defeats and I am as amazed as any other that I have gotten from there to here.

god, love is more strange than numerals more strange than grass on fire more strange than the dead body of a child drowned in the bottom of a tub, we know so little, we know so much, we don't know enough.

A i urreni njerëzit? Unë nuk i urrej ata ... Unë vetëm ndjehen mirë kur ata nuk janë përreth.

That was the trouble with being a writer, that was the main trouble—leisure time, excessive leisure time. You had to wait around for the buildup until you could write and while you were waiting you went crazy, and while you were going crazy you drank and the more you drank the crazier you got.

I'm sorry, I said, I'm really sorry. I stood up in a cafe and screamed I'm in love, and now you've made a fool of me…

A worthwhile day, I had killed two spiders, I had upset the balance of nature - now we would all be eaten up by the bugs and the flies.

alone tonight in this house, alone with 6 cats who tell me without effort all that there is to know.

People were usually much better in their letters than in reality. They were much like poets in this way.

I find that when the pain gets bad enough there are only three things to do — get drunk, kill yourself or laugh. I usually get drunk and laugh.

crawled like a blind slug into the web

A bit lazy, perhaps. But crafty

I walk out of the dark and into the dark and sit down and wait.

I hated them because they had something I had not yet had, and I said to myself, I said to myself again, someday I will be as happy as any of you, you will see.

That way I wouldn't have to see the guys in their walking shorts. They looked as if nothing had ever touched them- all well-mothered, protected, with a soft sheet of contentment. None of them had ever been in jail, or worked hard with their hands, or even gotten a traffic ticket. Skimmed-milk jollies, the whole bunch.

gratuitous masturbation of the psyche.