Charles Bukowski Quotes
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Joan of Arc had style. Jesus had style.
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The male, for all his bravado and exploration, is the loyal one, the one who generally feels love. The female is skilled at betrayal and torture and damnation.
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We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.
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Shakespeare didn't work at all for me.
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Genius might be the ability to say a profound thing in a simple way.
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'I'm no preacher but I can tell you this-the lives that people lead are driving them crazy and their insanity comes out in the way they drive.'
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To not to have entirely wasted one's life seems to be a worthy accomplishment, if only for myself.
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Even though I write about the human race, the further away from them, the better I feel. Two miles is great; two thousand miles is beautiful.
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Generally, a writer of force is anywhere from 20 years to 200 years ahead of his generation.
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Money is like sex. It seems much more important when you don't have any...
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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.
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I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there.
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It's when you begin to lie to yourself in a poem in order to simply make a poem, that you fail.
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there's a bluebird in my heart thatwants to get outbut I'm too tough for him,I say, stay in there, I'm not goingto let anybody see you....I only let him outat night sometimeswhen everybody's asleep....he's singing a littlein there, I haven't quite let himdie...and it's nice enough tomake a manweep, but I don'tweep,doyou?
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I was given the job of milking the cows, finally, and it got me up earlier than anybody. But it was kind of nice, pulling at those cows' tits (pg. 172).
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When I write, when I'm going hot, I don't want to write more than four hours in a row. After that, you're pushing it.
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Something was always after a man. It never relented. No rest, ever.
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Between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four, I must have read a whole library.
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A cat is only itself, representative of the strong forces of life that won't let go.
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My writing is jagged and harsh, I want it to remain that way; I don't want it smoothed out.
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If I'm an ass, I should say so. If I don't, somebody else will. If I say it first, that disarms them.
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My love is a hummingbird sitting that quiet moment on the bough, as the same cat crouches.
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Never envy a man his lady. Behind it all lays a living hell.
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In my work, as a writer, I only photograph, in words, what I see.