Charles bukowski quotes

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

Knowledge without follow-through is worse than no knowledge.

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.

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

Love is kind of like when you see a fog in the morning, when you wake up before the sun comes out. It's just a little while, and then it burns away... Love is a fog that burns with the first daylight of reality.

I am for the small man who has not forgotten, for the man who loves his beer and his women and his sunlight

I was laying in bed one night and I thought 'I'll just quit - to hell with it.' And another little voice inside me said 'Don't quit - save that tiny little ember of spark.' And never give them that spark because as long as you have that spark, you can start the greatest fire again.

Any asshole can chase a skirt, art takes discipline.

The crazy ones only laugh when there is no reason to laugh.

I see men assassinated around me every day. I walk through rooms of the dead, streets of the dead, cities of the dead; men without eyes, men without voices; men with manufactured feelings and standard reactions; men with newspaper brains, television souls and high school ideas.

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

Almost everybody is born a genius and buried an idiot.

The more cats you have, the longer you live. If you have a hundred cats, you'll live ten times longer than if you have ten. Someday this will be discovered, and people will have a thousand cats and live forever.

Invent yourself and then reinvent yourself.

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

True revolution comes from true revulsion; when things get bad enough the kitten will kill the lion.

Only the boring get bored

I knew I was strong, and maybe like they said, "crazy." But I had this feeling inside of me that something real was there.

I no longer want it all, just some comfort and some sex and some minor love.

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

I think that the world should be full of cats and full of rain, that's all, just cats and rain, rain and cats, very nice, good night.

I've never been lonely. I've been in a room... I've felt suicidal, I've been depressed. I've felt awful ... awful beyond all , but I never felt that one other person could enter that room and cure what was bothering me...or that any number of people could enter that room. In other words, loneliness is something I've never been bothered with because I've always had this terrible itch for solitude.

Style is the answer to everything. A fresh way to approach a dull or dangerous thing. To do a dull thing with style is preferable to doing a dangerous thing without it. To do a dangerous thing with style is what I call art.

Success is always dangerous. It can make an asshole out of anybody.

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.

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.

Sex is interesting, but it's not totally important. I mean it's not even as important (physically) as excretion. A man can go seventy years without a piece of ass, but he can die in a week without a bowel movement.

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

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

They never pay the slaves enough so they can get free, just enough so they can stay alive and come back to work.

Human relationships didn't work anyhow. Only the first two weeks had any zing, then the participants lost their interest. Masks dropped away and real people began to appear: cranks, imbeciles, the demented, the vengeful, sadists, killers. Modern society had created its own kind and they feasted on each other. It was a duel to the death--in a cesspool.

Are people crazy? People waited all their lives. They waited to live, they waited to die. They waited in line to buy toilet paper. They waited in line for money. And if they didn't have any money they waited in longer lines. You waited to go to sleep and then you waited to awaken. You waited to get married and you waited to get divorced. You waited for it to rain, you waited for it to stop. You waited to eat and then you waited to eat again. You waited in a shrink's office with a bunch of psychos and you wondered if you were one.

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

The crowd is the gathering place of the weakest; true creation is a solitary act.

There are only two things wrong with money: too much or too little.

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

Don't fight your demons. Your demons are here to teach you lessons. Sit down with your demons and have a drink and a chat and learn their names and talk about the burns on their fingers and scratches on their ankles. Some of them are very nice.

This is very important -- to take leisure time. Pace is the essence. Without stopping entirely and doing nothing at all for great periods, you're gonna lose everything...just to do nothing at all, very, very important. And how many people do this in modern society? Very few. That's why they're all totally mad, frustrated, angry and hateful.

Drinking is another way of thinking, another way of living. It gives you two lives instead of one.

Death is nothing, brother, it's life that's hard

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

Sundays kill more people than bombs.

You can steal my women but don't play with my whiskey.

To create art means to be crazy alone forever.

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

The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose, they sliced a little more off you, until there was nothing left. At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole goddamned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidate who reminded them most of themselves.

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

My ambition is handicapped by laziness

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

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

I will remember the kisses our lips raw with love and how you gave me everything you had and how I offered you what was left of me, and I will remember your small room the feel of you the light in the window your records your books our morning coffee our noons our nights our bodies spilled together sleeping the tiny flowing currents immediate and forever your leg my leg your arm my arm your smile and the warmth of you who made me laugh again.

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.

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

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.

You know the typical crowd, Wow, it’s Friday night, what are you going to do? Just sit there? Well, yeah. Because there’s nothing out there. It’s stupidity. Stupid people mingling with stupid people. Let them stupidify themselves. I’ve never been bothered with the need to rush out into the night. That’s all. Sorry for all the millions, but I’ve never been lonely. I like myself. I’m the best form of entertainment I have.

It's not the large things that send a man to the madhouse... no, it's the continuing series of small tragedies... not the death of his love but the shoelace that snaps with no time left.

Capitalism has survived communism. Now, it eats away at itself.

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.

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 free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it

I've never met another man I'd rather be.

Drinking is an emotional thing. It joggles you out of the standardism of everyday life, out of everything being the same. It yanks you out of your body and your mind and throws you against the wall. I have the feeling that drinking is a form of suicide where you're allowed to return to life and begin all over the next day. It's like killing yourself, and then you're reborn. I guess I've lived about ten or fifteen thousand lives now.

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

Censorship is the tool of those who have the need to hide actualities from themselves and from others. Their fear is only their inability to face what is real, and I can't vent any anger against them. I only feel this appalling sadness. Somewhere, in their upbringing, they were shielded against the total facts of our existence. They were only taught to look one way when many ways exist.

and when love came to us twice and lied to us twice we decided to never love again that was fair fair to us and fair to love itself. we ask for no mercy or no miracles; we are strong enough to live and to die and to kill flies, attend the boxing matches, go to the racetrack, live on luck and skill, get alone, get alone often, and if you can't sleep alone be careful of the words you speak in your sleep; and ask for no mercy no miracles; and don't forget: time is meant to be wasted, love fails and death is useless.

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

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.

Find what you love and let it kill you.

The nine-to-five is one of the greatest atrocities sprung upon mankind. You give your life to a function that doesn't interest you. This situation so repelled me that I was driven to drink, starvation, and mad females, simply as an alternative.

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

I just want a hot cup of coffee,black,and I don’t want to hear about your troubles.

An artist is a man who says a difficult thing in a simple way

I lapsed into my pathetic cut-off period. Often with humans, both good and bad, my senses simply shut off, they get tired, I give up. I am polite. I nod. I pretend to understand because I don’t want anybody to be hurt. That is the one weakness that has lead me into the most trouble. Trying to be kind to others I often get my soul shredded into a kind of spiritual pasta. No matter. My brain shuts off. I listen. I respond. And they are too dumb to know that I am not there.

If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is.

For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stonewritten. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.

Are you becoming what you've always hated?

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.

I lie as truthfully as I can.

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

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

I was fairly poor but most of my money went for wine and classical music. I loved to mix the two together.

Pain is strange. A cat killing a bird, a car accident, a fire.... Pain arrives, BANG, and there it is, it sits on you. It's real. And to anybody watching, you look foolish. Like you've suddenly become an idiot. There's no cure for it unless you know somebody who understands how you feel, and knows how to help.

I am not like other people. I am burning in hell. The hell of myself.

Those faces you see every day on the streets were not created entirely without hope: be kind to them: like you they have not escaped.

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.

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.

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

as the spirit wanes the form appears

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.

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.

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

I don't remember going to bed, but in the morning, there I was.

Unless it comes out of your soul like a rocket, unless being still would drive you to madness or suicide or murder, don't do it. unless the sun inside you is burning your gut, don't do it. when it is truly time, and if you have been chosen, it will do it by itself and it will keep on doing it until you die or it dies in you. there is no other way. and there never was.

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

People empty me. I have to get away to refill.

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

I have no time for things that have no soul.

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

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

Insanity is relative. Who sets the norm?

I walked around the block twice, passed 200 people and failed to see a human being.

When you play the field selfishly everything works against you: one can’t insist on love or demand affection. you’re finally left with whatever you have been willing to give which often is: nothing.

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

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

The less I needed, the better I felt.

If you have the ability to love, love yourself first.

I like women who haven’t lived with too many men. I don’t expect virginity but I simply prefer women who haven’t been rubbed raw by experience. There is a quality about women who choose men sparingly; it appears in their walk in their eyes in their laughter and in their gentle hearts. Women who have had too many men seem to choose the next one out of revenge rather than with feeling. When you play the field selfishly everything works against you: one can’t insist on love or demand affection. You’re finally left with whatever you have been willing to give which often is: nothing.

what matters most is how well you walk through the fire

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

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

With me, my main vision for life was to avoid as many people as possible. The less people I saw the better I felt.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Love is a form of prejudice. You love what you need, you love what makes you feel good, you love what is convenient. How can you say you love one person when there are ten thousand people in the world that you would love more if you ever met them? But you'll never meet them.

The wisest thing to do if you’re living in hell is to make yourself comfortable.

I couldn't get myself to read the want ads. The thought of sitting in front of a man behind a desk and telling him that I wanted a job, that I was qualified for a job, was too much for me. Frankly, I was horrified by life, at what a man had to do simply in order to eat, sleep, and keep himself clothed. So I stayed in bed and drank. When you drank the world was still out there, but for the moment it didn't have you by the throat.

If I never see you again I will always carry you inside outside on my fingertips and at brain edges and in centers centers of what I am of what remains.

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

Drink from the well of yourself and begin again.

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

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