Quotes from Charles Bukowski

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

It will rain all this night and we will sleep transfixed by the dark water as our blood runs through our fragile life.

Fiction is an improvement on life

They laughed. Things were funny. They weren't afraid to care. There was no sense to life, to the structure of things.

life itself is not the miracle. that pain should be so constant, that's the miracle -

human relationships simply aren't durable. I think back to the women in my life. they seem non-existent.

It is possible to be truly mad and to still exist upon scraps of life.

I do not like the human race. I don't like their heads, I don't like their faces, I don't like their feet, I don't like their conversations, I don't like their hairdos, I don't like their automobiles.

There are women who can make you feel more with their bodies and their souls, but these are the exact women who will turn the knife into you right in front of the crowd. Of course, I expect this, but the knife still cuts.

love iz a big fat turkey and every day iz thanksgiving

And don't forget: time is meant to be wasted, love fails and death is useless.

I've had so many knives stuck into me, when they hand me a flower I can't quite make out what it is. It takes time.

the tired sunsets and the tired people - it takes a lifetime to die and no time at all.

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

I guess we often get the deep blues, both of us, and wonder what it all means- the people, the buildings, the day by day things, the waste of time, of ourselves.

She was desperate and she was choosey at the same time and, in a way, beautiful, but she didn't have quite enough going for her to become what she imagined herself to be.

A woman is a full time job. You have to choose your profession.

Sometimes things are just what they seem to be and that's all there is to it.

The factories, the jails, the drunken days and nights, the hospitals have weakened and shaken me like a mouse in the mouth of a hip-cat: life.- from an Aug. 1965 letter to Jim Roman "On Cats

DEATH COMES SLOWLY LIKE ANTS TO A FALLEN FIG

I have not worked out my poems with a careful will, falling rather on haphazard and blind formulation of wordage, a more flowing concept, in a hope for a more new and lively path. I do personalize at times, but this only for the grace and elan of the dance.

how can you be true and kind at the same time? how?

There is no hurry. Time means nothing to you.

I didn't feel that way about it. I had been playing with death for some time. I can't say we were the best of friends but we were well acquainted.