Charles Bukowski Quotes
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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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Hell was what you made it.
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Genius might be the ability to say a profound thing in a simple way.
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I didn't even have a uniform, just a cap. I wore my regular clothes. The way my shackjob Betty and I drank there was hardly money for clothes.
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Shakespeare didn't work at all for me.
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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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A cat is only itself, representative of the strong forces of life that won't let go.
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Money is like sex. It seems much more important when you don't have any...
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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.
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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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Once a woman turns against you, forget it. They can love you, then something turns in them. They can watch you dying in a gutter, run over by a car, and they'll spit on you.
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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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I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there.
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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.
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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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Joan of Arc had style. Jesus had style.
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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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Generally, a writer of force is anywhere from 20 years to 200 years ahead of his generation.
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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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Sometimes I felt that I didn’t even know who I was. All right, I’m Nicky Belane. But check this. Somebody could yell out, ‘Hey, Harry! Harry Martel!’ and I’d most likely answer, ‘Yeah, what is it?’ I mean, I could be anybody, what does it matter?
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You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.
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Never envy a man his lady. Behind it all lays a living hell.
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Those who have been writing literature have not been writing life.
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'People don't need love. What they need is success in one form or another. It can be love but it needn't be.'