Quotes from Charles Bukowski

take a writer away from his typewriter and all you have left is the sickness which started him typing in the beginning.

Then after all this reverse the procedure. Have a good love affair. And the thing you might learn is that nobody knows anything— not the State, nor the mice the garden hose or the North Star. And if you ever catch me teaching a creative writing class and you read this back to me I'll give you a straight A right up the pickle barrel.

a bad trip? this whole country, this whole world is on a bad trip, friend. but they'll arrest you for swallowing a tablet.

to ignore life at the proper time takes a special wisdom: like a Happy New Year to you all.

Let us celebrate the stupidity of our endurance.

That was love, that was bravery. Shit, who could really stand me? anyone who could stand me had a lot of forgiveness of soul.

every man believes that he can tame a nymph but it only leads to the grave — for the man.

Two bulls fighting for the cow. And a bony one at that. But in America the loser oftentimes got the cow. Mother instinct? Better wallet? Longer dick? God knows what.…

But trouble and pain were what kept a man alive. Or trying to avoid trouble and pain. It was a full time job.

I thought of all my rotten jobs and how glad I was to have them. for a while. then it was a matter of quitting or getting fired. both felt good.

Hey, Bubu, a bottle of good French wine...Sip it slowly, do you most good. You'll sleep. Be happy. And if you want to come downstairs, dance and sing, talk, ok. Do what you want. Here's the wine.

Oh, you've got a sweet voice, baby, such a sad sad sweet voice, I'd like to fuck you, I thought.

We'll sleep together tonight trying to fit ourselves inside the wallpaper.

Një intelektual thotë një gjë të thjeshtë në një mënyrë të vështirë. Një artist thotë një gjë të vështirë në një mënyrë të thjeshtë.

I guess she felt as I: that the weakness was not Government but Man, one at a time, that men were never as strong as their ideas and that ideas were governments turned into men; and so it began on a couch with a spilled martini and it ended in the bedroom: desire, revolution, nonsense ended, and the shades rattled in the wind, rattled like sabres, cracked like cannon, and 30 dogs, 20 men on 20 horses chased one fox across the fields under the sun

I tried teeling myself that feeling guilty was just a sickness of some sort. That it was men without guilt who made progress in life. Men who were able to lie, to cheat, men who knew all the shortcuts. Cortez. He didn't fuck around. Neither did Vince Lombardi. But no matter how much I thought about it, I still felt bad.

We all sat there and looked at each other and didn't look at each other. We chewed gum, drank coffee, went into restrooms, urinated, slept. We sat on the hard benches and smoked cigarettes we didn't want to smoke. We looked at each other and didn't like what we saw.

But no, there weren't any maybes. Wealth meant victory and victory was the only reality.

I look like a man in a death camp. I am. still, I'm lucky: I feat on solitude, I will never miss the crowd.

The idea, of course, might be to let them know that writing needn't be hard work; the hard work is getting out of bed in the morning or at noon; the hard work is looking at people's faces in long supermarket lines; the hard work is working for somebody else who is making money using your life's hours and years.

I just wanted to get away from them. But there was no place to go. Suicide? Jesus Christ, just more work. I felt like sleeping for five years but they wouldn't let me.

then I was a young man a thousand years old, and now I am an old man waiting to be born.

Although looked down upon, the idiots seemed to have the more peaceful lives: nothing was expected of them.

On blue jean day everybody in town was supposed to wear blue jeans or get thrown in the lake. I put on my only suit and necktie and slowly, like Billy the Kid, with all eyes on me, I walked slowly through the town, looking in windows, stopping for cigars. I broke that town in half like a wooden match.