Charles Bukowski Quotes

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

they simply never understand, do they, that sometimes solitude is one of the most beautiful things on earth?

the tired sunsets and the tired people - it takes a lifetime to die and no time at all.

New Year's Eve always terrifies me.

Intellectuals say simple things in difficult ways. Artists say difficult things in simple ways.

I have two rules. One is, never trust a man who smokes a pipe. The other is, never trust a man with shiny shoes.

if you get married they think you're finished and if you are without a woman they think you're incomplete.

I can almost understand why people leap from bridges.

Love is all right for those who can handle the psychic overload. It's like trying to carry a full garbage can on your back over a rushing river of piss.

People who believe in politics are like people who believe in God: they are sucking wind through bent straws.

The courage it took to get out of bed each morning to face the same things over and over was enormous.

Things will be far worse than they are now. And far better. I wait.

I grow tired of 18th century moralities in a 20th century space-atomic age

Careful poetry and careful people live only long enough to die safely.

The hangover was brutal but he didn't mind. It told him he had been somewhere else, someplace good.

Some men hope for revolution but when you revolt and set up your new government you find your new government is still the same old Papa, he has only put on a cardboard mask.

The secret is writing down one simple line after another.

Sundays kill more people than bombs.

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

Those who preach god, need god Those who preach peace do not have peace Those who preach love do not have love

If I hadn't been a drunkard, I probably would have committed suicide long ago.

I was in love again. I was in trouble

In the morning it was morning and I was still alive.

we know God is dead, they've told us, but listening to you I wasn't sure.

Gradually I came to realize that my understanding of women goes only as far as the pleasure is concerned.

A love like that was a serious illness, an illness from which you never entirely recover.

It’s when you hide things that you choke on them.

all that I know is that I believe in the sound of music and the running of a horse. all else is squabble.

Never envy a man his lady. Behind it all lays a living hell.

So, that’s what they wanted: lies. Beautiful lies. That’s what they needed. People were fools. It was going to be easy for me.

If it doesn't come bursting out of you in spite of everything, don’t do it.

"Baby," I said. "I'm a genius but nobody knows it but me."

pain is absurd because it exists, nothing more.

I want to let her know though that all the nights sleeping beside her even the useless arguments were things ever splendid and the hard words I ever feared to say can now be said: I love you.

We’ve died so many times now that we can only wonder why we still care.

purple does something strange to me

Without literature, life is hell.

I had noticed that both in the very poor and very rich extremes of society the mad were often allowed to mingle freely.

people see so many movies that when they finally see one not so bad as the others, they think it's great. an Academy Award means that you don't stink quite as much as your cousin.

Why did I come here? I thought. Why is it always only a matter of choosing between something bad and something worse?

hate contains truth. beauty is a facade.

That was all a man needed: hope. It was lack of hope that discouraged a man.

That’s when I first learned that it wasn’t enough to just do your job, you had to have an interest in it, even a passion for it.

There's no way I can stop writing, it's a form of insanity.

What? You’d dare drink right after getting out of jail for intoxication?” That’s when you need a drink the most.

Animals never worry about Heaven or Hell. Neither do I. Maybe that's why we get along.

Those who escape hell however never talk about it and nothing much bothers them after that

When you drank the world was still out there, but for the moment it didn’t have you by the throat.

People do too much. They say too much.

There is nothing that teaches you more than regrouping after failure and moving on.