Authors — Quotes

Charles Bukowski Quotes: 72

Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.
It's possible to love a human being if you don't know them too well.
Do you hate people?”“I don't hate them...I just feel better when they're not around.
Barfly
An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.
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
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
Factotum
You have to die a few times before you can reallylive.
The People Look Like Flowers at Last
To do a dull thing with style-now that's what I call art.
That's the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.
Women
I wanted the whole world or nothing.
Post Office
My dear,Find what you love and let it kill you.Let it drain you of your all. Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness.Let it kill you and let it devour your remains.For all things will kill you, both slowly and fastly, but it’s much better to be killed by a lover.~ Falsely yours
The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.
there are worse thingsthan being alonebut it often takesdecades to realize thisand most often when you doit's too lateand there's nothing worsethan 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.
Love is a Dog from Hell
being alone never felt right. sometimes it felt good, but it never felt right.
Women
I felt like crying but nothing came out. it was just a sort of sad sickness, sick sad, when you can't feel any worse. I think you know it. I think everybody knows it now and then. but I think I have known it pretty often, too often.
Tales of Ordinary Madness
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.
Tales of Ordinary Madness
those who escape hellhowevernever talk aboutitand nothing muchbothers themafterthat.
A love like that was a serious illness, an illness from which you never entirely recover.
The People Look Like Flowers at Last
There's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get outbut 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.
there is a place in the heart thatwill never be filleda spaceand even during thebest momentsandthe greatest timestimeswe will know itwe will know itmore thaneverthere is a place in the heart thatwill never be filledandwe will waitandwaitin that space.
Sometimes you just have to pee in the sink.
Life's as kind as you let it be.
Hot Water Music
great writers are indecent peoplethey live unfairlysaving the best part for paper.good human beings save the worldso that bastards like me can keep creating art,become immortal.if you read this after I am deadit means I made it.
The People Look Like Flowers at Last
We don’t even ask happiness, just a little less pain.
It wasn’t my day. My week. My month. My year. My life. God damn it.
Pulp
I drive around the streetsan inch away from weeping,ashamed of my sentimentality andpossible love.
Love is a Dog from Hell
some moments are nice, some arenicer, some are even worthwritingabout.
War All the Time
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.
It was like the beginning of life and laughter. It was the real meaning of the sun
Factotum
I wish to weepbut sorrow isstupid.I wish to believebut belief is agraveyard.
What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire
nothing can save you except writing. it keeps the walls from failing.
in this land some of us fuck more than we die but most of us die better than we fuck
Love is a Dog from Hell
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.
my mother, poor fish,wanting to be happy, beaten two or three times aweek, telling me to be happy: "Henry, smile!why don't you ever smile?"and then she would smile, to show me how, and it was thesaddest smile I ever saw
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.
the writing of somemenis like a vast bridgethat carries youoverthe many thingsthat claw and tear.The Wine of Forever
Love is a Dog from Hell
To me, nudity is a joke. I don't think nude people are very attractive at all. I like my women fully clothed. I like to imagine what might be under there. It might not be the standard thing. Imagine, stripping a woman down, and she has a body like a little submarine. With periscope, propellers, torpedoes. That would be the one for me. I'd marry her right off and be faithful to the end.
She's mad, but she's magic. There's no lie in her fire.
unless the sun inside you is burning your gut, don't do it
Finally there is nothing here for death to take away.
What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire
That was all a man needed: hope. It was lack of hope that discouraged a man.
Factotum