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Charles Bukowski Quotes

Charles Bukowski quote from classy quote

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

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Death Love

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

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Love

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. All right, so we do the best we can. Granted. But we must still realize that love is just the result of a chance encounter. Most people make too much of it. On these grounds a good fuck is not to be entirely scorned. But that's the result of a chance meeting too. You're damned right. Drink up. We'll have another.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Love Wisdom

some moments are nice, some arenicer, some are even worthwritingabout.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Bukowski Love Moments Nice Poetry War All The Time Writing

I drive around the streetsan inch away from weeping,ashamed of my sentimentality andpossible love.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Love Sentimentality Weep Weeping

She's mad, but she's magic. There's no lie in her fire.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Fire Love Magic Women

I was glad I wasn't in love, that I wasn't happy with the world. I like being at odds with everything. People in love often become edgy, dangerous. They lose their sense of perspective. They lose their sense of humor. They become nervous, psychotic bores. They even become killers.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Love

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

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Depression Facade Love Motherhood Pain

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 failsand death is useless.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Love

alone with everybody the flesh covers the bone and they put a mind in there and sometimes a soul,and the women break vases against the walls and them men drink too much and nobody finds the one but they keep looking crawling in and out of beds.flesh covers the bone and the flesh searches for more than flesh.there's no chance at all:we are all trapped by a singular fate.nobody ever finds the one.the city dumps fill the junkyards fill the mad houses fill the hospitals fill the graveyards fill nothing else fills.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Love

If I never see you again I will always carry youinsideoutsideon my fingertipsand at brain edgesand in centerscentersof what I am ofwhat remains.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Letters Love Relationships

After dinner or lunch or whatever it was -- with my crazy 12-hour night I was no longer sure what was what -- I said, Look, baby, I'm sorry, but don't you realize that this job is driving me crazy? Look, let's give it up. Let's just lay around and make love and take walks and talk a little. Let's go to the zoo. Let's look at animals. Let's drive down and look at the ocean. It's only 45 minutes. Let's play games in the arcades. Let's go to the races, the Art Museum, the boxing matches. Let's have friends. Let's laugh. This kind of life like everybody else's kind of life: it's killing us.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Life Love

People don't need love. What they need is success in one form or another. It can be love but it needn't be.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Love Success

Life's as kind as you let it be.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Life Truth

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

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Life

Style is the answer to everything.A fresh way to approach a dull or dangerous thingTo do a dull thing with style is preferable to doing a dangerous thing without itTo do a dangerous thing with style is what I call artBullfighting can be an artBoxing can be an artLoving can be an artOpening a can of sardines can be an artNot many have styleNot many can keep styleI have seen dogs with more style than men,although not many dogs have style.Cats have it with abundance.When Hemingway put his brains to the wall with a shotgun,that was style.Or sometimes people give you styleJoan of Arc had styleJohn the BaptistJesusSocratesCaesarGarcía Lorca.I have met men in jail with style.I have met more men in jail with style than men out of jail.Style is the difference, a way of doing, a way of being done.Six herons standing quietly in a pool of water,or you, naked, walking out of the bathroom without seeing me.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Art Life Style

I wish to weepbut sorrow isstupid.I wish to believebut belief is agraveyard.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Belief Life Perseverance Pessimism Sorrow Weeping

The Laughing Heartyour life is your lifedon’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.be on the watch.there are ways out.there is a light somewhere.it may not be much light butit beats the darkness.be on the watch.the gods will offer you chances.know them.take them.you can’t beat death butyou can beat death in life, sometimes.and the more often you learn to do it,the more light there will be.your life is your life.know it while you have it.you are marvelousthe gods wait to delightin you.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski 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.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Life Living

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

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Autobiographical Quote Charles Bukowski Inspirational Journalist Life Poem Poet Poetry Poetry Life Quote Poetry Quotes Posthumous Modern Writer Reflection Satirical Writer Quotes

when we were kidslaying around the lawnon ourbellieswe often talkedabouthowwe'd like todieandwe allagreed on thesamething,we'd alllike to diefucking(althoughnone of ushaddone anyfucking)and nowthatwe are hardlykidsany longerwe think moreabouthownot todieandalthoughwe'rereadymost ofuswouldprefer todo italoneunder thesheetsnowthatmost ofushave fuckedour livesaway.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Adulthood Bukowski Death Die Growing Up Kids Life Love Nostalgia Poem Poetry Sex

having nothing to struggleagainstthey have nothing to strugglefor.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Battle Bukowski Death Life Love Poem Poetry Strength Strength Through Adversity Stronger Struggle

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.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Death Inspirational

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

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Inspirational

When I begin to doubt my ability to work the word, I simply read another writer and know I have nothing to worry about. My contest is only with myself, to do it right, with power, and force, and delight, and gamble.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Inspirational Writing

Sometimes you just have to pee in the sink.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Humor Making Do

Yes Yeswhen God created love he didn't help most when God created dogs He didn't help dogs when God created plants that was average when God created hate we had a standard utility when God created me He created me when God created the monkey He was asleep when He created the giraffe He was drunk when He created narcotics He was high and when He created suicide He was low when He created you lying in bed He knew what He was doing He was drunk and He was high and He created the mountains and the sea and fire at the same time He made some mistakes but when He created you lying in bed He came all over His Blessed Universe.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Bukowski Humor Passion Women

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.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Hostage Humor

What is your advice to young writers?” “Drink, fuck and smoke plenty of cigarettes.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Advice Alcohol Authors Bukowski Cigarettes Drink Funny Humor Ironic Irony Sarcasm Sex Smoke Writers Writing Writing Process

Nothing was ever in tune. People just blindly grabbed at whatever there was: communism, health foods, zen, surfing, ballet, hypnotism, group encounters, orgies, biking, herbs, Catholicism, weight-lifting, travel, withdrawal, vegetarianism, India, painting, writing, sculpting, composing, conducting, backpacking, yoga, copulating, gambling, drinking, hanging around, frozen yogurt, Beethoven, Back, Buddha, Christ, TM, H, carrot juice, suicide, handmade suits, jet travel, New York City, and then it all evaporated and fell apart. People had to find things to do while waiting to die. I guess it was nice to have a choice.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Humans Philosophy Society

Beasts bounding through time. Van Gogh writing his brother for paintsHemingway testing his shotgunCeline going broke as a doctor of medicinethe impossibility of being humanVillon expelled from Paris for being a thiefFaulkner drunk in the gutters of his townthe impossibility of being humanBurroughs killing his wife with a gunMailer stabbing histhe impossibility of being humanMaupassant going mad in a rowboatDostoevsky lined up against a wall to be shotCrane off the back of a boat into the propellerthe impossibilitySylvia with her head in the oven like a baked potatoHarry Crosby leaping into that Black SunLorca murdered in the road by the Spanish troopsthe impossibilityArtaud sitting on a madhouse benchChatterton drinking rat poisonShakespeare a plagiaristBeethoven with a horn stuck into his head against deafnessthe impossibility the impossibilityNietzsche gone totally madthe impossibility of being humanall too humanthis breathingin and outout and inthese punksthese cowardsthese championsthese mad dogs of glorymoving this little bit of light towardusimpossibly

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Beasts Beatiful Bukowski Champions Cowards Creatures Dog Glory Mad Soul Truth

Turgenev was a very serious fellow but he could make me laugh because a truth first encountered can be very funny. When someone else's truth is the same as your truth, and he seems to be saying it just for you, that's great.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Truth

the gods play nofavorites.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Bukowski Death Equality Favoritism God Gods Life Love Poem Poetry Religion Truth

All right, God, say that You are really there. You have put me in this fix. You want to test me. Suppose I test You? Suppose I say that You are not there? You've given me a supreme test with my parents and with these boils. I think that I have passed Your test. I am tougher than You. If You will come down here right now, I will spit into Your face, if You have a face. And do You shit? The priest never answered that question. He told us not to doubt. Doubt what? I think that You have been picking on me too much so I am asking You to come down here so I can put You to the test! I waited. Nothing. I waited for God. I waited and waited. I believe I slept.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Faith God

the gods seldomgivebut so quicklytake.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Bukowski Christianity Death God Gods Life Love Poem Poetry Religion

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

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Bukowski Happiness Pain Unhappiness Unhappy

(the whole world is at thethroat of the world,everybody feels angry,short-changed, cheated,everybody is despondent,disillusioned.)I welcomed shots of peace, tattered shards ofhappiness.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Anger Happiness Inspirational World

she slammed the door andwas gone.I looked at the closed doorand at the doorknoband strangelyI didn't feelalone.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Alone Bukowski Complete Happiness Happy Inspiration Life Loneliness Lonely Loss Love Poem Poetry Self

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

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Hope

You could sit in there all day drinking coffee and they never asked you to leave no matter how bad you looked. They just asked the bums not to bring their wine and drink it there. Places like that gave you hope when there wasn´t much hope.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Hope
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