Explore Quotes by Charles Bukowski

Sometimes there's luck, _x000D_ When there is you stock up on it _x000D_ and wait for the other times

Drinking is an emotional thing. It joggles you out of the standardism of everyday life, out of everything being the same.

Don't ever write a novel unless it hurts like a hot turd coming out.

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.

I am a poem. There is no way out.

The worst thing for a writer is to know another writer, and worse than that, to know a number of other writers. Like flies on the same turd.

That's how it is with books, isn't it: They're not in a hurry. They'll wait for you till you're ready. People empty me. I have to go away to refill.

Censorship is the tool of those who have the need to hide actualities from themselves and from others.

I was laying in bed one night and I thought 'I'll just quit - to hell with it.' And another little voice inside me said 'Don't quit - save that tiny little ember of spark.' And never give them that spark because as long as you have that spark, you can start the greatest fire again.

Keep your money in your pocket. Or bet it on a good horse.

I am aware that a computer can’t create a poem, but neither can a typewriter.

People were usually much better in their letters than in reality. They were much like poets in this way.

There's a bluebird in my heart that _x000D_ wants to get out _x000D_ but I pour whiskey on him and inhale _x000D_ cigarette smoke _x000D_ and the whores and the bartenders _x000D_ and the grocery clerks _x000D_ never know that _x000D_ he's _x000D_ in there.

Sundays kill more people than bombs.

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

The courage it took to get out of bed each morning to face the same things over and over was enormous.

In New York you've got to have all the luck.

The more cats you have, the longer you live. If you have a hundred cats, you'll live ten times longer than if you have ten. Someday this will be discovered, and people will have a thousand cats and live forever.

The empty, the angry, the lonely, the tricked, we are all museums of fear.

To not to have entirely wasted one’s life seems to be a worthy accomplishment, if only for myself.

Drink from the well of yourself and begin again.