Top 856 Quotes & Sayings by Charles Bukowski - Page 4

There's nothing to stop a man from writing unless that man stops himself. If a man truly desires to write, then he will. Rejection and ridicule will only strengthen him. And the longer he is held back the stronger he will become, like a mass of rising water against a dam. There is no losing in writing, it will make your toes laugh as you sleep, it will make you stride like a tiger, it will fire the eye and put you face to face with death. You will die a fighter, you will be honored in hell. The luck of the word. Go with it, send it.

Sometimes you just have to pee in the sink.

Writing is something that you don't know how to do. You sit down and it's something that happens, or it may not happen. So, how can you teach anybody how to write? It's beyond me, because you yourself don't even know if you're going to be able to. I'm always worried, well, you know, every time I go upstairs with my wine bottle. Sometimes I'll sit at that typewriter for fifteen minutes, you know. I don't go up there to write. The typewriter's up there. If it doesn't start moving, I say, well this could be the night that I hit the dust.

if it doesn't come bursting out of you in spite of everything, don't do it. unless it comes unasked out of your heart and your mind and your mouth and your gut, don't do it.

They never pay the slaves enough so they can get free, just enough so they can stay alive and come back to work.

I couldn't get myself to read the want ads. The thought of sitting in front of a man behind a desk and telling him that I wanted a job, that I was qualified for a job, was too much for me. 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.

there is a place in the heart that will never be filled a space and even during the best moments and the greatest times times we will know it we will know it more than ever there is a place in the heart that will never be filled and we will wait and wait in that space.

Beware Those Who Are ALWAYS READING BOOKS

I never write in the daytime. It's like running through the shopping mall with your clothes off. Everybody can see you. At night ... that's when you pull the tricks ... magic.

I can almost understand why people leap from bridges.

If you want to know where God is, ask a drunk.

I have gotten so used to melancholia that I greet it like an old friend.

I wasn’t lonely. I experienced no self-pity. I was just caught up in a life in which I could ?nd no meaning.

I had no interests. I had no interest in anything. I had no idea how I was going to escape. At least the others had some taste for life. They seemed to understand something that I didn’t understand. Maybe I was lacking. It was possible. I often felt inferior. I just wanted to get away from them. But there was no place to go. Suicide? Jesus Christ, just more work. I felt like sleeping for five years but they wouldn’t let me.

there is always one woman to save you from another and as that woman saves you she makes ready to destroy

Most people's deaths are a sham. There's nothing left to die.

But my whole life has been a matter of fighting for one simple hour to do what I want to do. There was always something getting in the way of my getting to myself.

I still have a little whiskey left and therefore a chance.

Dog is much admired by Man because he believes in the hand which feeds him. A perfect set-up. For 13 cents a day you've got a hired killer who thinks you are god. A dog can't tell a Nazi from a Republican from a Commie from a Democrat and, many times, neither can I.

I am a poem. There is no way out.

The Difference Between Art and Life is that Art is More Bearable

True revolution comes from true revulsion; when things get bad enough the kitten will kill the lion.

The streets were full of insane & dull people. Most of them lived in nice houses and didn't seem to work, and you wondered how they did it.

It's better to do a dull thing with style than a dangerous thing without it.

Human relationships are strange. I mean, you are with one person a while, eating and sleeping and living with them, loving them, talking to them, going places together, and then it stops.

Writing is like going to bed with a beautiful woman and afterwards she gets up, goes to her purse and gives me a handful of money.

Let it die. Let there be a new beginning. It’s awful. Goodnight.

The shortest distance between two points is often unbearable.

You've got to know when to let a woman go if you want to keep her,and if you don't want to keep her you let her go anyhow so it's always a process of letting go, one way or the other.

Human relationships didn't work anyhow. Only the first two weeks had any zing, then the participants lost their interest. Masks dropped away and real people began to appear: cranks, imbeciles, the demented, the vengeful, sadists, killers. Modern society had created its own kind and they feasted on each other. It was a duel to the death--in a cesspool.

I often carry things to read so that I will not have to look at the people.

An early taste of death is not necessarily a bad thing.

The free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it

Pretty words, as pretty women, wrinkle up and die.

We are like roses that have never bothered to bloom when we should have bloomed and it is as if the sun has become disgusted with waiting

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

your letters got sadder. your lovers betrayed you. kid, I wrote back, all lovers betray. it didn't help. you said you had a crying bench and it was by a bridge and the bridge was over the river and you sat on the crying bench every night and wept for the lovers who had hurt and forgotten you.

People were interesting at first. Then later, slowly but surely, all the flaws and madness would manifest themselves. I would become less and less to them; they would mean less and less to me.

Things will be far worse than they are now. And far better. I wait.

There are times when those eyes inside your brain stare back at you.

too often, the only escape is sleep

nobody can save you but yourself. you will be put again and again into nearly impossible situations. they will attempt again and again through subterfuge, guise and force to make you submit, quit and/or die quietly inside. nobody can save you but yourself

I enjoy the bad things that are said about me. It enhances sales and makes me feel evil. I don't like to feel good 'cause I am good. But evil? Yes. It gives me another dimension.

In a capitalistic society the losers slaved for the winners and you have to have more losers than winners.

you boys can keep your virgins give me hot old women in high heels with asses that forgot to get old.

I want so much that is not here and do not know where to go.

I didn't like parties.I didn't know how to dance and people frightened me, especially people at parties. They attempted to be sexy and gay and witty and although they hoped they were good at it, they weren 't. They were bad at it. Their trying so hard only made it worse.

Before my death I hope to obtain my life.

being alone never felt right. sometimes it felt good, but it never felt right.

If I bet on humanity, I'd never cash a ticket.

I will remember the kisses, our lips raw with love, and how you gave me everything you had and how I offered you what was left of me.

great writers are indecent people they live unfairly saving the best part for paper. good human beings save the world so that bastards like me can keep creating art, become immortal. if you read this after I am dead it means I made it.

There may not be a hell, but those who judge may create one. I think people are over-taught. They are over-taught everything. You have to find out by what happens to you, how you will react. I'll have to use a strange term here... "good." I don't know where it comes from, but I feel that there's an ultimate strain of goodness born in each of us. I don't believe in God, but I believe in this "goodness" like a tube running through our bodies. It can be nurtured. It's always magic, when on a freeway packed with traffic, a stranger makes room for you to change lanes... it gives you hope.

Maybe when I get in the grave, things will be beautiful.

there is a loneliness in this world so great that you can see it in the slow movement of the hands of a clock

I no longer want it all, just some comfort and some sex and some minor love.

I remember awakening one morning and finding everything smeared with the color of forgotten love.

He asked, "What makes a man a writer?" "Well," I said, "it's simple. You either get it down on paper, or jump off a bridge.

I don’t understand people, never will. It looks like I got to travel pretty much alone.

Bad poetry is caused by people who sit down and think, Now I am going to write a Poem.