Quotes from Charles Bukowski

The post office, or any world of work, is only one institutionalised system of control that is designed to beat people, to condition them into accepting that humiliation and failure is the norm. Those who do not rebel against this lose any ability to think for themselves. The workers are robbed of power whilst the bosses have only a small amount of it and can only use it arbitrarily, which is to say, pointlessly.

Don't butter me, Babe.

You only had one shot. Why be a window-washer?

have to be on the cross and bleeding in order to have soul. They want you half mad, dribbling down your shirt front. I've had enough of the cross, my tank is full of that. If I can stay off the cross, I still have plenty to run on. Too much. Let them get on the cross, I'll congratulate them. But pain doesn't create writing, a writer does.

December 25, 1963 Christmas night and they've battered their heads together until they are silly and they've smiled themselves silly and vomited on the floor, 98% of them amateur drinkers, amateur Christians, amateur human beings

It felt good to sit alone in a small space and smoke and drink. I had always been good company for myself.

Too many writers write for the wrong reasons. They want to get famous or they want to get rich or they want to get laid by the girls with bluebells in their hair... When everything works best, it's not because you chose writing, but because writing chose you. It's when you're mad with it. When it's stuffed in your ears, nostrils, under your finger nails. It's when there's no hope but that.

That is the one weakness that has lead me into the most trouble. Trying to be kind to others I often get my soul shredded into a kind of spiritual pasta.

Somebody was always controlling who got a chance and who didn't.

the strays keep arriving: now we have 5 cats and they are tenuous, flighty, con- ceited, naturally bright and awesomely beautiful.         one

I have no definite talent or trade, and how I stay alive is largely a matter of magic.

You women have more holes than swiss cheese.

did she love you? only as an extension of herself. what else can love be? the common sense to care very much for something very good. it needn't be related by bloodline. it can be a red beachball or a piece of buttered toast.

I did not like war, even when it was the popular thing to do.

Maybe I'll write a novel, I thought. And then I did.

I liked to fuck too, but it wasn't my religion. There were too many ridiculous and tragic things about it. People didn't seem to know how to handle it. So they made a toy out of it. A toy that destroyed people.

El problema con el mundo es que la gente inteligente está llena de dudas, mientras que la gente estúpida está llena de certezas.

When women agree with me I always do the other thing

I was like a turd that drew flies instead of like a flower that butterflies and bees desired. I wanted to live alone,I felt best being alone, cleaner,,

I know it's impossible to explain this to you. I carry this terrible aching hell in my heart.

I put on some bacon and eggs and celebrated with an extra quart of beer.

Simplicity is always the secret, to a profound truth, to doing things, to writing, to painting. Life is profound in its simplicity.

And a cat never knows fear—finally—he only winds up into the spring of the sea and the rock, and even in a death-fight he does not think of anything except the majesty of darkness.

Teeth. What god-damned things they were. We had to eat. And eat and eat again. We were all disgusting, doomed to our dirty little tasks. Eating and farting and scratching and smiling and celebrating holidays.