Quotes from Charles Bukowski

About church: the trouble with a mask is it never changes.

You can't beat death but you can beat death in life.

suicide fails as you get older: there's less and less to kill.

our progenitors, our educational systems, the land, the media, the way have deluded and misled the masses: they have been defeated by the aridity of the actual dream. they were unaware that achievement or victory or luck or whatever the hell you want to call it must have its defeats.

you must some day die for nothing as I have lived.

I had a dream about you. I opened your chest like a cabinet, it had doors, and when I opened the doors, I saw all kinds of soft things inside you--teddy bears, tiny fuzzy animals, all these soft, cuddly things.

Dismiss perfection as an ache of the greedy, but do not give in to the mass modesty of easy imperfection.

I went into the men's room and stared in the mirror at my face in disgust. I looked like I knew something, but it was a lie, I was a fake and there's nothing worse in the world than when a man suddenly realizes and admits to himself that he's a phoney, after spending all his time up to then trying to convince himself that he wasn't. I stared at all the sinks and pipes and bowls and I felt like them, worse than them: I'd rather be them.

All that shit they were fed about democracy and opportunity was just to keep them from burning down the palace.

luckily, I found a few other crazed men who almost remained that way until they died.

to whom it may concern: please phone me for appointments when you want to see me. I will not answer unsolicited knocks upon the door. I need time to do my work. I will not allow you to murder my work. please understand that what keeps me alive will make me a better person toward and for you when we finally meet under easy and unstrained conditions.

Your life is your life

People lack originality.

not being able to love fully they will believe your love incomplete and then they will hate you and their hatred will be perfect

Today I will walk in the sun. I will simply walk in the sun.

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

A man needed somebody. There wasn't anybody around, so you had to make up somebody, make him up to be like a man should be. It wasn't make-believe or cheating. The other way was make-believe and cheating: living your life without a man like him around.

if the rest of the world could see you today their laughter would bring the sun to its knees and even the flowers would leap from the ground like bulldogs and chase you away to where you belong wherever that is, and who cares where it is as long as it's somewhere away from here.

Parker had a young white boy with him-one of the neurotic tribe of the lost- and the kid's eyes were filled with wet layers of tears. One big tear in each eye. They did not drop out. It was fascinating. I had seen women sit and look at me with those same eyes before they got mad and started screaming about what a son of a bitch I was.

The whole college scene was soft. They never told you what to expect out there in the real world. They just crammed you with theory and never told you how hard the pavements were. A college education could destroy an individual for life. Books could make you soft. When you put them down, and really went out there, then you needed to know what they never told you.

Writing is also my cat. Writing lets me face it.

The whole scene was indecent, mad. It smacked of murder and assassination.

it was a beauty fire, it contained soul, the sides of sunshine mountains, hot streams of smiling fish, warm stockings smelling a bit like toast. I held my hand over the little flame. I had beautiful hands. that one thing I had. I had beautiful hands.

I was still tough but it wasn't the same. I had to withdraw. I watched people from afar, it was like a stage play. Only they were on stage and I was an audience of one.