Quotes from Charles Bukowski

hell is a closed door when you're starving for your goddamned art but sometimes you feel at least like having a peek through the keyhole. young or old, good or bad, I don't think anything dies as slow and as hard as a writer.

I like to prowl ordinary places and taste the people—from a distance. I don't want them too near because that's when attrition starts.

I'm hungry," she said. "Let me cook!" "I'm hungry too. I'll eat you!

meanwhile I look at young girls stems flowers of chance. there must be a way. surely there must be a way that we have not yet though of. who put this brain inside of me? it cries it demands it says that there is a chance. it will not say no.

and we were afraid then that all throughout our lives things like that would happen, that nobody wanted anybody to be strong and beautiful like that, that others would never allow it, and that many people would have to die.

Después de todo ¿por qué era necesario amar a un ser humano? Nunca duraba mucho. Había demasiadas diferencias entre cada individuo, y lo que empezaba siendo amor acababa siempre en guerra despiadada

It almost seemed like a fuck, maybe better." "It didn't mean anything, it was just dancing.

every man is afraid of being queer. I get a little tired of it. maybe we should all become queers and relax.

He, and all of us, are the victims of an attitude that has been growing in our land for nearly a decade - an attitude that says a man can choose the laws he must obey, that he can take the law into his own hands for a cause, that crime does not necessarily mean punishment.

The streets were full of insane and dull people. Most of them lived in nice houses and didn't seem to work, and you wondered how they did it.

I'd rather hear about a live American bum than a dead Greek God.

Woman this head like a saucer decorated with everything as lip to lip we hang in mechanical joy; my hands blaze with arias but i think of books on anatomy, and i fall from you as nations burn in anger… to recover from most pitiful error and rebuild, this is it loss and mending until they take us in. the glory of a saturday afternoon like biting into an old peach and you walk across the room heavy with everything except my love.

TIME WOUNDS ALL HEELS.

I think good poetry should startle, shatter and, yes, entertain while getting as close to the truth as possible. I can get all the comfort I need from a good cigar.

They had temporarily escaped the factories, the warehouses, the slaughterhouses, the car washes—they'd be back in captivity the next day but now they were out—they were wild with freedom. They weren't thinking about the slavery of poverty. Or the slavery of welfare and food stamps.

I guess what I meant is that you are better off doing nothing than doing something badly. But the problem is that bad writers tend to have the self-confidence, while the good ones tend to have self-doubt. [1989 interview in the literary journal "Arete". In response to the question Your poem 'friendly advice to a lot of young men' says that one is better off living in a barrel than he is writing poetry. Would you give this same advice today?]

Only the strong can live alone, the strong and the selfish.

you are alone, Chinaski, and below the stage the seats are empty. the theatre is dark. why do you keep acting? what a bad habit.

A whore is a woman who takes more than she gives. A man who takes more than he gives is called a businessman.

a good book can make an almost impossible existence, liveable for the reader and the writer.

they would say 'he said this, he did that', but they would never say 'she said this, she did that'. So I would say, they are sick, and I am well. Pardon me.

I guess the only time most people think about injustice is when it's happening to them.

The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence. -- Dünyan?n sorunu, ak?ll? insanlar ÅŸüphelerle doluyken, aptallar?n özgüvenle dolu olmas?d?r.

There's always somebody about to ruin your day, if not your life.