Charles Bukowski Quotes

Understand me. I’m not like an ordinary world. I have my madness, I live in another dimension and I do not have time for things that have no soul.

The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.

Can you remember who you were, before the world told you who you should be?

People are strange: They are constantly angered by trivial things, but on a major matter like totally wasting their lives, they hardly seem to notice.

Find what you love and let it kill you.

If something burns your soul with purpose and desire, it’s your duty to be reduced to ashes by it. Any other form of existence will be yet another dull book in the library of life.

Love is a fog that burns with the first daylight of reality.

Sometimes I feel as if we are all trapped in a movie. We know our lines, where to walk, how to act, only there is no camera. Yet, we can't break out of the movie. And it's a bad one.

You have to die a few times before you can really live.

I stopped looking for a Dream Girl, I just wanted one that wasn't a nightmare.

Do you hate people? I don't hate them...I just feel better when they're not around.

Some people never go crazy, what truly horrible lives they must live.

the free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it - basically because you feel good, very good, when you are near or with them.

Some people like what you do, some people hate what you do, but most people simply don't give a damn.

The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don't have to waste your time voting.

The shortest distance between two points is often unbearable.

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

Slavery was never abolished, it was only extended to include all the colors.

I loved you like a man loves a woman he never touches, only writes to, keeps little photographs of.

Wherever the crowd goes run in the other direction. They're always wrong.

You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.

There's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out.

If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start.

We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.

There's a light somewhere. It may not be much light but it beats the darkness.

I am a series of small victories and large defeats and I am as amazed as any other that I have gotten from there to here.

Beauty is nothing, beauty won’t stay. You don’t know how lucky you are to be ugly, because if people like you, you know it’s for something else.

Beware of those who seek constant crowds; they are nothing alone.

The world is full of boring, identical and mindless people.

And don't forget: time is meant to be wasted, love fails and death is useless.

Bad taste creates many more millionaires than good taste.

writers are desperate people and when they stop being desperate they stop being writers.

nobody can save you but yourself and you’re worth saving. it’s a war not easily won but if anything is worth winning then this is it.

I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there.

If you want to know who your friends are, get yourself a jail sentence.

I’ve had so many knives stuck into me, when they hand me a flower I can’t quite make out what it is. It takes time.

We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.

people run from rain but sit in bathtubs full of water.

Some lose all mind and become soul,insane. some lose all soul and become mind, intellectual. some lose both and become accepted

Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I'm not going to make it, but you laugh inside — remembering all the times you've felt that way.

what matters most is how well you walk through the fire

I am not a snob; it is simply that I am not interested with what most people have to say, or what they want to do — mostly with my time.

‎"she’ mad but she’ magic. there’ no lie in her fire.

The masses are always wrong...Wisdom is doing everything the crowd does not do. All you do is reverse the totality of their learning and you have the heaven they're looking for.

We don’t even ask happiness, just a little less pain.

as the spirit wanes the form appears

Simplicity is always the secret, to a profound truth, to doing things, to writing, to painting. Life is profound in its simplicity

The less I needed, the better I felt.

There's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I'm too tough for him, I say, stay in there, I'm not going to let anybody see you.

God is a lonely place without steak.