Explore Quotes by Charles Bukowski

I was young I was so young it hurt like a knife inside because there was no alternative except to hide as long as possible--- not in self-pity but with dismay at my limited chance: trying to connect.

if you get married they think you're finished and if you are without a woman they think you're incomplete.

it seemed to me that I had never met another person on earth as discouraging to my happiness as my father. and it appeared that I had the same effect upon him.

there's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I'm too clever, I only let him out at night sometimes when everybody's asleep. I say, I know that you're there, so don't be sad. then I put him back, but he's singing a little in there, I haven't quite let him die and we sleep together like that with our secret pact and it's nice enough to make a man weep, but I don't weep, do you?

as the spirit wanes the form appears

I went to the worst of bars hoping to get killed but all I could do was to get drunk again.

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

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

for a man of 55 who didn't get laid until he was 23 and not very often until he was 50 I think that I should stay listed via Pacific Telephone until I get as much as the average man has had

if you think they didn't go crazy in tiny rooms just like you're doing now without women without food without hope then you're not ready.

I loved you like a man loves a woman he never touches, only writes to, keeps little photographs of.

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

A man who can beat the horses can do anything he makes up his mind to do.

Dying should come easy: like a freight train you don't hear when your back is turned.

What a weary time those years were -- to have the desire and the need to live but not the ability.

there are worse things than being alone but it often takes decades to realize this and most often when you do it's too late and there's nothing worse than too late

Sometimes you just have to pee in the sink.

Poetry is what happens when nothing else can.

Boring damned people. All over the earth. Propagating more boring damned people. What a horror show. The earth swarmed with them.

All our days are marked with/ unexpected/ affronts--some/ disastrous, others/ less so/ but the process is/ wearing and/ continuous./ Attrition rules./ Most give/ way/ leaving/ empty spaces/ where people should/ be.

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.