100 Thought-Provoking Charles Bukowski Quotes

Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.

Never

  

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

  

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.

Think

  

What matters most is how well you walk through the fire

  

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.

  

My ambition is handicapped by laziness

  

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

  

I wanted the whole world or nothing.

  

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

  

An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.

  

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

  

If you're losing your soul and you know it, then you've still got a soul left to lose

  

Find what you love and let it kill you.

  

Real loneliness is not necessarily limited to when you are alone.

  

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

  

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

Like , Never

  

Being alone never felt right. sometimes it felt good, but it never felt right.

Never

  

Boring damned people. All over the earth. Propagating more boring damned people. What a horror show. The earth swarmed with them.

  

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.

  

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

  

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

Like , Never

  

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.

  

Poetry is what happens when nothing else can.

  

Of course it's possible to love a human being if you don't know them too well.

  

I remember awakening one morning and finding everything smeared with the color of forgotten love.

  

Sex is kicking death in the ass while singing.

Singing

  

People with no morals often considered themselves more free, but mostly they lacked the ability to feel or love.

  

Sometimes you just have to pee in the sink.

  

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

  

There is a loneliness in this world so great that you can see it in the slow movement of the hands of a clock

  

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

Me

  

You boys can keep your virgins give me hot old women in high heels with asses that forgot to get old.

Me

  

There is always one woman to save you from another and as that woman saves you she makes ready to destroy

  

The shortest distance between two points is often unbearable.

  

Life's as kind as you let it be.

  

My beerdrunk soul is sadder than all the dead christmas trees of the world.

  

We are like roses that have never bothered to bloom when we should have bloomed and it is as if the sun has become disgusted with waiting

Like , Never

  

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

  

What a weary time those years were -- to have the desire and the need to live but not the ability.

Time

  

I went to the worst of bars hoping to get killed but all I could do was to get drunk again.

  

She was consumed by 3 simple things: drink, despair, loneliness; and 2 more: youth and beauty

  

I often carry things to read so that I will not have to look at the people.

  

Things get bad for all of us, almost continually, and what we do under the constant stress reveals who/what we are.

  

Without literature, life is hell.

Life

  

...in that drunken place you would like to hand your heart to her and say touch it but then give it back.

  

Lighting new cigarettes, pouring more drinks. It has been a beautiful fight. Still is.

  

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

  

Great art is horseshit, buy tacos.

  

Dogs and angels are not very far apart

  

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.

Time

  

There are times when those eyes inside your brain stare back at you.

  

It wasn’t my day. My week. My month. My year. My life. God damn it.

Life

  

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

Time

  

I never met another man I'd rather be. And even if that's a delusion, it's a lucky one.

Never

  

I drive around the streets an inch away from weeping, ashamed of my sentimentality and possible love.

  

Some moments are nice, some are nicer, some are even worth writing about.

  

And yet women-good women--frightened me because they eventually wanted your soul, and what was left of mine, I wanted to keep.

Me

  

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

  

I carry death in my left pocket. Sometimes I take it out and talk to it: "Hello, baby, how you doing? When you coming for me? I'll be ready.

Me

  

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.

Like , Trying

  

I want so much that is not here and do not know where to go.

  

You son of a bitch, she said, I am trying to build a meaningful relationship. you can't build it with a hammer, he said.

  

Too often the people complain that they have done nothing with their lives and then they wait for somebody to tell them that this isn't so.

  

Anything is a waste of time unless you are fucking well or creating well or getting well or looming toward a kind of phantom-love-happiness.

Time

  

It was like the beginning of life and laughter. It was the real meaning of the sun

Life , Like

  

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

  

She is no longer the beautiful woman she was. she sends photos of herself sitting upon a rock by the ocean alone and damned. I could have had her once. I wonder if she thinks I could have saved her?

  

The trouble with a mask is it never changes

Never

  

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

  

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

  

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

Think

  

The fuckers. There, I feel better. God-damned human race. There, I feel better.

  

I wish to weep but sorrow is stupid. I wish to believe but belief is a graveyard.

  

The tigers have found me and I do not care.

  

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

  

I said goodbye again sucking up all that was left of her into the little that was left of me. I said, 'don't look for me again. fuck it. we are all lost. goodbye, goodbye.

Me

  

So it's always a process of letting go, one way or another

  

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

  

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

  

In this land some of us fuck more than we die but most of us die better than we fuck

  

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

  

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.

Like

  

I wasn't a misanthrope and I wasn't a misogynist but I liked being alone. It felt good to sit alone in a small space and smoke and drink. I had always been good company for myself.

  

He asked, "What makes a man a writer?" "Well," I said, "it's simple. You either get it down on paper, or jump off a bridge.

  

Any asshole can chase a skirt, art takes discipline.

  

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.

Yourself

  

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?

  

One can never be sure whether it's good poetry or bad acid

Never

  

To fight for each minute is to fight for what is possible within yourself, so that your life and your death will not be like theirs.

Life

  

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.

Like

  

And then there are some who believe that old relationships can be revived and made new again. but please if you feel that way don't phone don't write don't arrive

  

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

  

Nothing is worse than to finish a good shit, then reach over and find the toilet paper container empty. Even the most horrible human being on earth deserves to wipe his ass.

  

In my next life I want to be a cat. To sleep 20 hours a day and wait to be fed. To sit around licking my ass.

Life

  

It was better for me when I could imagine greatness in others, even if it wasn't always there.

Me

  

It's better to do a dull thing with style than a dangerous thing without it.

  

I didn't have any friends at school, didn't want any. I felt better being alone. I sat on a bench and watched the others play and they looked foolish to me.

Me

  

The more crap you believe, the better off you are.

  

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

Never

  

It was a joy! Words weren't dull, words were things that could make your mind hum. If you read them and let yourself feel the magic, you could live without pain, with hope, no matter what happened to you.

Yourself