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Charles Bukowski Quotes

Charles Bukowski quote from classy quote

I was so thin I could slice bread with my shoulderblades, only I seldom had bread

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Bread Poor Shoulderblades Thin

there's a bluebird in my heart thatwants to get outbut I'm too clever, I only let him outat night sometimeswhen everybody's asleep.I say, I know that you're there,so don't besad.then I put him back,but he's singing a littlein there, I haven't quite let himdieand we sleep together likethatwith oursecret pactand it's nice enough tomake a manweep, but I don'tweep, doyou?

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Bluebird Secret

The secret is writing down one simple line after another.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Secret Writing

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.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Alcohol

I think I need a drink.''Almost everybody does only they don't know it.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Alcohol

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.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Alcohol Bukowski

Meanwhile the 3 a.m. drunks of the world would lay in their beds, trying in vain to sleep, and deserving that rest, if they could find it.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Alcohol Long Distance Drunk

I had never been a dresser. My shirts were all faded and shrunken, 5 or 6 years old, threadbare. My pants the same. I hated department stores, I hated the clerks, they acted so superior, they seemed to know the secret of life, they had a confidence I didn't possess. My shoes were always broken down and old, I disliked shoe stores too. I never purchased anything until it was completely unusable, and that included automobiles. It wasn't a matter of thrift, I just couldn't bear to be a buyer needing a seller, seller being so handsome and aloof and superior. Besides, it all took time, time when you could just be laying around and drinking.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Alcohol Inferiority Complex Life

Like anybody can tell you, I am not a very nice man. I don't know the word. I have always admired the villain, the outlaw, the son of a bitch. I don't like the clean-shaven boy with the necktie and the good job. I like desperate men, men with broken teeth and broken minds and broken ways. They interest me. They are full of surprises and explosions. I also like vile women, drunk cursing bitches with loose stockings and sloppy mascara faces. I'm more interested in perverts than saints. I can relax with bums because I am a bum. I don't like laws, morals, religions, rules. I don't like to be shaped by society.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Alcohol Antisocial Bukowski Outlaw

So where do you go? Back to the bottle And back to a tiny room somewhere. And wait. And wait, and wait. That's all.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Being Drinking Not Fitting In Nothing Nothingness Room Skid Row Waiting

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.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Drinking Rebirth

I like to change liquor stores frequently because the clerks got to know your habits if you went in night and day and bought huge quantities. I could feel them wondering why I wasn't dead yet and it made me uncomfortable. They probably weren't thinking any such thing, but then a man gets paranoid when he has 300 hangovers a year.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Drinking

I needed a vacation. I needed 5 women. I needed to get the wax out of my ears. My car needed an oil change. I'd failed to file my damned income tax. One of the stems had broken off of my reading glasses. There were ants in my apartment. I needed to get my teeth cleaned. My shoes were run down at the heels. I had insomnia. My auto insurance had expired. I cut myself every time i shaved. I hadn't laughed in 6 years. I tended to worry when there was nothing to worry about. And when there was something to worry about, i got drunk.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Drinking Life To Do List

Getting drunk was good. I decided that I would always like getting drunk. It took away the obvious and maybe. If you could get away from the obvious often enough, you wouldn't become obvious yourself.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Drinking Humor

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.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Drinking

The street to my left was backed up with traffic and I watched the people waiting patiently in the cars. There was almost always a man and a women, staring straight ahead, not talking. It was, finally, for everyone, a matter of waiting. You waited and you waited- for the hospital, the doctor, the plumber, the madhouse, the jail, papa death himself. First the signal red, then the signal was green. The citizens of the world ate food and watched t.v. and worried about their jobs or lack of the same, while they waited.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Life Waiting

Her eyes always had a frantic, lost look. He could never cure her eyes of that.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Love Misery

Endurance is more important than truth because without endurance there can't be any truth. And truth means going to the end like you mean it. That way, death itself comes up short when it grabs

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Endurance Truth

If you can hit a guy once, you can hit him twice.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Fighting

people see so many movies that when they finally see one not so bad as the others, they think it's great. an Academy Award means that you don't stink quite as much as your cousin.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Academy Award Academy Awards Film Movies Theater Theatre

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

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Charles Bukowski Injustice

from the beginning, through themiddle years and up to theend:too bad, too bad, too bad.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Depressing Insightful

I am sick with caring.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Caring Charles Bukowski

It's like a movie, I thought, like a fucking movie. It seemed funny to me. It felt as if we were on camera. I liked it. It was better than the racetrack, it was better than the boxing matches. We kept drinking.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Derealization Life Movies

of one hundred movies there's one that is fair, one that's good and ninety eight that are very bad. most movies start badly and steadily get worse

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Movies

Don't you go to the movies?Mostly just to eat popcorn in the dark.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Cinema Movies Popcorn

I felt I had to win. It seemed very important. I didn't know why it was important and I kept thinking, why do I think this is so important? And another part of me answered, just because it is.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Importance Of Winning Just Because It Is Win

There is nothing worse than being broke and having your woman leave you. Nothing to drink, no job,just the walls, sitting there staring at the walls and thinking. That's how women got back at you, but it hurt and weakened them too. Or so I like to believe.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Breakup Relationships

The best thing about the bedroom was the bed. I liked to stay in bed for hours, even during the day with covers pulled up to my chin. It was good in there, nothing ever occurred in there, no people, nothing.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Anti Social Nothing

it doesn't matter if Prince Charles falls off his horseor that the hummingbird is so seldomseenor that we are too senseless to goinsane.coffee. give us more of that NOTHINGcoffee.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Apathy Nothing

the rent is a little higher herebut so far I've been able to pay itand that's a miracle toolike still maybe being sanewhile thinking of guns and sidewalksand old ladies in libraries.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Libraries Rent Sane The New Place

Yes?’ he asked, looking at me over the sheet.‘I’m a writer temporarily down on my inspirations.’‘Oh, a writer, eh?’‘Yes.’‘Are you sure?’‘No, I’m not.’‘What do you write?’‘Short stories mostly. And I’m halfway through a novel.’‘A novel, eh?’‘Yes.’‘What’s the name of it?’‘”The Leaky Faucet of My Doom.”‘‘Oh, I like that. What’s it about?’‘Everything.’‘Everything? You mean, for instance, it’s about cancer?’‘Yes.’‘How about my wife?’‘She’s in there too.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Cancer Short Stories Writing

The thing that I fear discriminating against is humor and truth.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Fear Truth Against

Genius might be the ability to say a profound thing in a simple way.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Simple Genius Profound

Having a bunch of cats around is good. If you're feeling bad, you just look at the cats, you'll feel better because they know that everything is just as it is. There's nothing to get excited about. They just know. They're saviours.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Cats Better Know

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.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Anger Sadness Censorship

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

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Simple Artist Intellectual

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

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Time Man World

What my character is or how many jails I have lounged in, or wards or walls or wassails, how many lonely-heart poetry readings I have dodged, is beside the point. A man's soul or lack of it will be evident with what he can carve upon a white sheet of paper.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Character Man Soul

I don't like the clean-shaven boy with the necktie and the good job. I like desperate men, men with broken teeth and broken minds and broken ways. They interest me. They are full of surprises and explosions.

~ Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Good Job Me
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