logo

Quotes About Reality

and even the trees we walked under seemed less than trees and more like everything else.
~ Charles Bukowski
Censorship is the tool of those who have the need to hide actualities from themselves and from others. Their fear is only their inability to face what is real, and I can't vent any anger against them. I only feel this appalling sadness. Somewhere, in their upbringing, they were shielded against the total facts of our existence. They were only taught to look one way when many ways exist.
~ Charles Bukowski
Love is a fog that burns with the first daylight of reality.
~ Charles Bukowski
pain is absurd because it exists, nothing more.
~ Charles Bukowski
Love is kind of like when you see a fog in the morning, when you wake up before the sun comes out. It's just a little while, and then it burns away… Love is a fog that burns with the first daylight of reality.
~ Charles Bukowski
WHAT'S WRONG WITH ASSHOLES, BABY? YOU'VE GOT AN ASSHOLE, I'VE GOT AN ASSHOLE! YOU GO TO THE STORE AND BUY A PORTERHOUSE STEAK, THAT HAD AN ASSHOLE! ASSHOLES COVER THE EARTH! IN A WAY TREES HAVE ASSHOLES BUT YOU CAN'T FIND THEM, THEY JUST DROP THEIR LEAVES. YOUR ASSHOLE, MY ASSHOLE, THE WORLD IS FULL OF BILLIONS OF ASSHOLES. THE PRESIDENT HAS AN ASSHOLE, THE CARWASH BOY HAS AN ASSHOLE, THE JUDGE AND THE MURDERER HAVE ASSHOLES . . . EVEN THE PURPLE STICKINPIN HAS AN ASSHOLE!
~ Charles Bukowski
But then if you lied to a man about his talent just because he was sitting across from you, that was the most unforgivable lie of them all, because that was telling him to go on, to continue which was the worst way for a man without real talent to waste his life, finally. But many people did just that, friends and relatives mostly.
~ Charles Bukowski
I was only photographing in words the reality of it all.
~ Charles Bukowski
There was nothing glorious about the life of a drinker or the life of a writer.
~ Charles Bukowski
2 p.m. beer nothing matters but flopping on a mattress with cheap dreams and a beer as the leaves die and the horses die and the landladies stare in the halls; brisk the music of pulled shades, a last man's cave in an eternity of swarm and explosion; nothing but the dripping sink, the empty bottle, euphoria, youth fenced in, stabbed and shaven, taught words propped up to die.
~ Charles Bukowski
Someday," I told Jan, "when they demonstrate that the world has four dimensions instead of just three, a man will be able to go for a walk and just disappear. No burial, no tears, no illusions, no heaven or hell. People will be sitting around and they'll say, 'What happened to George?' And somebody will say, 'Well, I don't know. He said he was going out for a pack of cigarettes.
~ Charles Bukowski
I could scream down 90 mountains to less than dust if only one living human had eyes in the head and heart in the body, but there is no chance, my god, no chance. rat with rat dog with dog hog with hog, play the piano drunk listen to the drunk piano, realize the myth of mercy stand still as even a child's voice snarls and we have not been fooled, it was only that we wanted to believe.
~ Charles Bukowski
Pain is strange. A cat killing a bird, a car accident, a fire…. Pain arrives, BANG, and there it is, it sits on you. It's real. And to anybody watching, you look foolish. Like you've suddenly become an idiot. There's no cure for it unless you know somebody who understands how you feel, and knows how to help.
~ Charles Bukowski
New affairs were exciting but they were also hard work. The first kiss, the first fuck had some drama. People were interesting at first. Then later, slowly but surely, all the flaws and madness would manifest themselves. I would become less and less to them; they would mean less and less to me.
~ Charles Bukowski
I'm not dead yet, just in a state of rapid decay, who isn't?
~ Charles Bukowski
Sometimes things are just what they seem to be and that's all there is to it.
~ Charles Bukowski
Beautiful thoughts, and beautiful women never last.
~ Charles Bukowski
It's not so much that nothing means anything but more that it keeps meaning nothing. there's no release, just gurus and self- appointed gods and hucksters. the more people say, the less there is to say. even the best books are dry sawdust.
~ Charles Bukowski
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.
~ Charles Bukowski
How are his poems? He's not as good as he thinks he is, but then most of us feel that way.
~ Charles Bukowski
I'd decided the campus was just a place to hide. There were some campus freaks who stayed on forever. The whole college scene was soft. They never told you what to expect out there in the real world. They just crammed you with theory and never told you how hard the pavements were. A college education could destroy an individual for life. Books could make you soft. When you put them down, and really went out there, then you needed to know what they never told you.
~ Charles Bukowski
You can shoot a barracuda between the eyes and it won't go to hell because it doesn't know where or what hell is...)
~ Charles Bukowski
Sometimes things are just what they seem to be and that's all there is to it. The best interpreter of the dream is the dreamer.
~ Charles Bukowski
Disneyland remains the central attraction of Southern California, but the graveyard remains our reality.
~ Charles Bukowski