Quotes from Charles Bukowski

was glad I wasn't in love, that I wasn't happy with the world. I like being at odds with everything. People in love often become edgy, dangerous. They lose their sense of perspective. They lose their sense of humor. They become nervous, psychotic bores. They even become killers.

is this how it works? in this room the hours of love still make shadows. when you left you took almost everything.

I gave him my code name. 'This is Mr. Slow Death.

My father was a great literary teacher. He taught me the meaning of pain. Pain without reason.

please take a picture of this: a 70-year-old white whale lurking within the warm white whirling water. how did he last? how did he escape all the harpoons for all those years? why didn't he get beached along the way on the dry shore? how did he evade so many schools of hungry sharks?

Style is important. Many people scream the truth but without style it is helpless.

I can sit down and vomit on the keys but it's my vomit. it's better than sitting in a room with 3 or 4 people and their pianos. this is my piano and it is better than theirs.

Cecelia sat and watched us drink. I could see that I repulsed her. I ate meat. I had no god. I liked to fuck. Nature didn't interest me. I never voted. I liked wars. Outer space bored me. Baseball bored me. History bored me. Zoos bored me.

am not a complete person—I'm a stunted city person. I am more or less a failed drizzling shit with absolutely nothing to offer." "Christ," she said, "don't you think I know that?" She

I think I'm going to die," the old man said. "I don't want to die. I'm afraid to die …" "You've lived long enough, you old fart!" muttered my father.

It didn't pay to trust another human being. Humans didn't have it, whatever it took.

Potential," I said, "doesn't mean a thing. You've got to do it. Almost every baby in a crib has more potential than I have.

Yeah? Well, if there's anything worse than a whore it's a bore.

We were in rich territory. I had forgotten that some people lived quite well while most others ate their own shit for breakfast.

I have seen dogs with more style than men, although not many dogs have style. Cats have it with abundance.

presumed that the reader was as fascinated by her life as she was - which was a deadly mistake. The other deadly mistakes she had made were too numerous to mention.

Born into this Into hospitals which are so expensive that it's cheaper to die Into lawyers who charge so much it's cheaper to plead guilty Into a country where the jails are full and the madhouses closed Into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes...

the most immense thing about beauty is finding it gone.

I want quiet thunder.

We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.

The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose, they sliced a little bit more off you, until there was nothing left. At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole goddamned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidate who reminded them most of themselves.

people who eat 3 meals a day throughout life have never really tasted Food...

The trouble with a mask is it never changes.

but when I see those lovely old boxcars with their faded painted lettering and those flat cars and those fat round tankers all lined up and waiting I get quiet inside I get what other men get from other things I just feel better and it's good to feel better whenever you can not needing a reason.