Charles Bukowski Quotes
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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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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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If I write badly about blacks, homosexuals and women, it is because of these who I met were that. There are many 'bads' - bad dogs, bad censorship; there are even 'bad' white males. Only, when you write about 'bad' white males, they don't complain about it. And need I say that there are 'good' blacks, 'good' homosexuals and 'good' women?
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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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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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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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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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The more cats you have, the longer you live. If you have a hundred cats, you'll live 10 times longer than if you have 10. Someday this will be discovered, and people will have a thousand cats and live forever. It's truly ridiculous.
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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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Generally, a writer of force is anywhere from 20 years to 200 years ahead of his generation.
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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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Money is like sex. It seems much more important when you don't have any...
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Between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four, I must have read a whole library.
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Something was always after a man. It never relented. No rest, ever.
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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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My love is a hummingbird sitting that quiet moment on the bough, as the same cat crouches.
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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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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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In my work, as a writer, I only photograph, in words, what I see.
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Never envy a man his lady. Behind it all lays a living hell.
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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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Bad taste creates many more millionaires than good taste.