Quotes from Charles Bukowski

as the night darkened I'd go back to Pershing Square and sit on the benches and watch and listen to the people. the winos on the lawn passed bottles of muscatel and port about as the war rushed toward us.

Don't let anybody tell you different. Life begins at 65.

listen, he said, you ever seen a bunch of crabs in a bucket? no, I told him. well, what happens is that now and then one crab will climb up on top of the others and begin to climb toward the top of the bucket, then, just as he's about to escape another crab grabs him and pulls him back down. really? I asked. really, he said, and this job is just like that, none of the others want anybody to get out of here. that's just the way it is

You are a bum, he told me, and you'll always be a bum! and I thought, if being a bum is to be the opposite of what this son-of-a-bitch is, then that's what I'm going to be. and it's too bad he's been dead so long for now he can't see how beautifully I've succeeded at that.

I walked around the library looking for books. I pulled them off the shelves, one by one. But they were all tricks. They were very dull. There were pages and pages of words that didn't say anything. Or if they did say something they took too long to say it and by the time they said it you already were too tired to have it matter at all.

So many people are doomed by their ambition and their gathered intelligence, their bank account and savings and loan intelligence. If there is any secret to life, that secret is not to try. Let it come to you: women, dogs, death, and creation.

Cuando la verdad de alguien es la misma que la tuya y parece que la está contando sólo para ti… eso es fantástico.

Human relationships simply aren't durable.

I found trouble, but the rest of what I was looking for, I haven't found that yet. maybe we find it when we die. maybe we don't. you've got your books of philosophy, your priest, your preacher, your scientist, so don't ask me.

You can't beat death but you can beat death in life, sometimes.

The best of you I like more than you think. the others don't count except that they have fingers and heads and some of them eyes and most of them legs and all of them good and bad dreams and a way to go.

Saber mantener el equilibrio justo entre soledad y gente, ésa es la clave, ésa es la táctica, para no acabar en el manicomio.

I entered the world once more, drove down the hill past the houses full and empty of people, I saw the mailman, honked, he waved back at me.

La gente la sera è in libertà provvisoria dalle fabbriche, dai magazzini, dalle stazioni di servizio, dai macelli. Il giorno dopo tornano dentro, ma adesso sono fuori, ubriachi di libertà. Non pensano alla schiavitù della povertà. I ricchi staranno bene finché i poveri non impareranno a costruire bombe atomiche nei loro seminterrati

I had come a long way from a guy who had worked in slaughterhouses, who had crossed the country with a railroad track gang, who had worked in a dog biscuit factory, who had slept on park benches, who had worked the nickel and dime jobs in a dozen cities across the nation.

so I let them have their little victories which they need far more than I do.

now they are celebrating my demise in taverns I no longer frequent.

to die on a kitchen floor at 7 o'clock in the morning while other people are frying eggs is not so rough unless it happens to you.

there is enough treachery, hatred violence absurdity in the average human being to supply any given army on any given day

Nothing that is against the law ever ceases to exist.

I like to choose. I have to care.

there is of course madness and terror too in knowing that some part of you wound up like a clock can never be wound again once it stops.

He was one of those who looked like a genius. I looked like a dishwasher so these types always pissed me just a bit.

I know that I have deserted you, the icecubes pile like fool's gold in the pitcher and now they are playing Alex Scriabin which is a little better but not much for me.