Charles Bukowski Quotes

Death meant little to me. It was the last joke in a series of bad jokes.

In a capitalistic society the losers slaved for the winners and you have to have more losers than winners.

The worst men have the best jobs the best men have the worst jobs or are unemployed or locked in madhouses.

Knowledge is knowing as little as possible.

I don't think I'll travel anymore. Travel is nothing but an inconvenience. There is always enough trouble where you are.

If you're going to try, go all the way. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives, jobs and maybe your mind.

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.

I knew exactly what I was doing: I was doing nothing. because I knew there was nothing to do.

A woman is a full time job. You have to choose your profession.

Do some living and get yourself a typewriter.

This incompleteness is all we have.

I've never been lonely. I like myself. I'm the best form of entertainment I have. Let's drink more wine!

Sometimes a man doesn’t know what to do about things and sometimes it’s best to lie very still and try not to think at all about anything.

It began as a mistake.

People just don't know how to write down a simple easy line. It's difficult for them; it's like trying to keep a hard-on while drowning - not many can do it.

I never pump up my vulgarity. I wait for it to arrive in its own terms.

it seemed to me that I had never met another person on earth as discouraging to my happiness as my father. and it appeared that I had the same effect upon him.

I was an Agnostic. Agnostics didn't have much to argue about.

I went to the bathroom and threw some water on my face, combed my hair. If I could only comb that face, I thought, but I can't.

I am aware that a computer can’t create a poem, but neither can a typewriter.

The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose, they sliced a little bit more off you, until there was nothing left.

To me Art (poetry) is a continuous and continuing process and that when a man fails to write good poetry he fails to live fully or well.

Even the stove and the refrigerator looked human, I mean good human - they seemed to have arms and voices and they said, hang around, kid, it's good here, it can be very good here.

some men never die and some men never live but we're all alive tonight.

If you can't write the next line, well, you're dead. The past doesn't matter.

Potential," I said, "doesn't mean a thing. You've got to do it. Almost every baby in a crib has more potential than I have.

That's the way it ends. The thin edge of the wedge.

it is all ash and dry leaves and grief gone like an ocean liner.

A woman must be nursed into subsistence by love, where a man can become stronger by being hated." - from 'Cows in Art Class

the best often die by their own hand just to get away, and those left behind can never quite understand why anybody would ever want to get away from them

What were you going to do tonight?" "I was going to listen to the songs of Rachmaninoff." "Who's that?" "A dead Russian.

Writers are nothing but beggars with a good line.

Art is its own excuse, and it's either Art or it's something else. It's either a poem or a piece of cheese.

I hid in bars, because I didn't want to hide in factories.

nothing can save you except writing. it keeps the walls from failing.

Death is not the problem; waiting around for it is.

We must.. We must bring our own light to the darkness

Human relationships are strange. I mean, you are with one person a while, eating and sleeping and living with them, loving them, talking to them, going places together, and then it stops.

The years have gone by quickly. Death sits in the seat next to me. We make a lovely couple.

whiskey makes the heart beat faster but it sure doesn't help the mind and isn't it funny how you can ache just from the deadly drone of existence?

There's music in everything, even defeat

We are all museums of fear.

The empty, the angry, the lonely, the tricked, we are all museums of fear.

Find what you love and let it kill you. For all things will kill you, both slowly and fastly, but it’s much better to be killed by a lover.

When a writer is swayed with his fame and his fortune, you can float him down the river with the turds.

I'm going, she said. I love you but you're crazy, you're doomed.

there are worse things than being alone but it often takes decades to realize this and most often when you do it's too late and there's nothing worse than too late

A spark can set a whole forest on fire. Just a spark. Save it.

young or old, good or bad, I don't think anything dies as slow and as hard as a writer.

Each man's hell is in a different place: mine is just up and behind my ruined face.