Quotes from Charles Bukowski

the knife cuts into the sun. the plate breaks. the cat yawns.

The good parts of our relationship felt like a rat walking around and gnawing at the inside of my stomach.

I was a janitor for a while but I can never imagine a man calling himself a Floor Engineer when he has to walk into the woman's crapper and clean up what they leave behind. I couldn't get a hard-on for a year after working in that place. what they leave behind. and on the floor. and in that little compartment behind the seat. or alongside of it. or wherever it was.

The reason so much bad poetry is written is that it is written as poetry instead of concept. And the reason the public doesn't understand poetry is that there is nothing to understand, and the reason most poets write it is that they think they understand. Nothing is to be understood or regained. It is simply to be written. By someone. Sometime. And not too often.

Roy had communicated, days earlier, to the Zen master that I was a drunk - unreliable - either faint-hearted or vicious - therefore during the cerimony, don't ask Bukowski for the rings because Bukowski might not be there. or he might loose the rings, or vomit, or loose Bukowski

The truth, however, was that there was very little greatness. It was almost nonexistent, invisible. But you could be sure that the worst writers had the most confidence, the least self-doubt. Anyway, writers were to be avoided, and I tried to avoid them, but it was almost impossible. They hoped for some sort of brotherhood, some kind of togetherness. None of it had anything to do with writing, none of it helped at the typewriter.

The parents of rich kids tended to be more patriotic because they had more to lose if the country went under.

Style is the answer to everything.

I pushed up against her warm tail and was asleep in 45 seconds.

What's fiction?" "Fiction is an improvement on life.

I had also read somewhere that if a man didn't truly believe or understand what he was espousing, somehow he could do a more convincing job

wszystko jest stratÄ… czasu, chyba ?e czÅ'owiek pieprzy siÄ™ w najlepsze, tworzy w najlepsze, ma siÄ™ jak najlepiej albo zmierza w kierunku uÅ'udy pod tytuÅ'em miÅ'o?? i szcz??cie. Wszyscy koÅ"czymy w gnojówce pora?ki - czy nazwiemy to Å›mierciÄ… czy bÅ'Ä™dem.

Me alegraba de no estar enamorado, de no ser feliz con el mundo. Me gustaba estar en desacuerdo con todo. La gente enamorada a menudo se ponía cortante, peligrosa. Perdían su sentido de la perspectiva. Perdían su sentido del humor. Se ponían nerviosos, psicóticos, aburridos. Incluso se convertían en asesinos.

it is usually mid-afternoon and quiet, and getting dressed we talk about what else there might be to do, but being together solves most of it for as long as those things stay solved in the history of women and man, it's different for each- for me, it's splendid enough to remember past the memories of pain and defeat and unhappiness: when you take it away do it slowly and easily make it as if I were dying in my sleep instead of in my life, amen.

My heart is a thousand years old.

In a capitalistic society the losers slaved for the winners and you have to have more losers than winners.

BILLS! BILLS! BILLS!' she screamed. 'IS THAT ALL YOU CAN BRING ME? THESE BILLS?' 'Yes, mam, that's all I can bring you.' I turned and walked on. It wasn't my fault that they used telephones and gas and light and bought all their things on credit. Yet when I brought them their bills they screamed at me - as if I had asked them to have a phone installed, or a $350 t.v. set sent over with no money down.

people who believe in politics are like people who believe in god: they are sucking wind through bent straws. there

There was no compassion or courtesy: fender jammed against fender, they drove on. I understood it: anybody who gave an inch would cause a traffic jam, a disturbance, a murder. Traffic flowed endlessly like turds in a sewer. It was marvelous to see, and none of the drivers were angry, they were simply resigned to the facts.

the wind blows hard tonight and it's a cold wind and I think about the boys on the row. I hope some of them have a bottle of red. it's when you're on the row that you notice that everything is owned and that there are locks on everything. this is the way a democracy works: you get what you can, try to keep that and add to it if possible. this is the way a dictatorship works too only they either enslave or destroy their derelicts. we just forgot ours. in either case it's a hard cold wind.

Unless the sun inside you is burning your gut, don't to it.

my typewriter is tombstone still. and I am reduced to bird watching.

You waited in a shrink's office with a bunch of psychos and you wondered if you were one.

The public is fortunate. Everything pleases them: icecream cones, rock concerts, singing, swinging, love, hate, masturbation, hot dogs, country dances, Jesus Christ, roller skating, spiritualism, capitalism, communism, circumcision, comic strips, Bob Hope, skiing, fishing murder bowling debating, anything. They don't expect much and they don't get much. They are one grand gang.