Explore Quotes by Charles Bukowski

Wherever the crowd goes run in the other direction. They're always wrong.

I would give anything for a female's hand on me tonight. they soften a man and then leave him listening to the rain.

I'll get back to the whores and the horses and the booze, while there's time.

Basically, that's why I wrote: to save my ass, to save my ass from the madhouse, from the streets, from myself.

We are hardly ever as strong as that which we create.

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

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.

I'm very clever _x000D_ at _x000D_ hiding poems _x000D_ perhaps more _x000D_ clever than I _x000D_ am _x000D_ at _x000D_ writing _x000D_ them.

The wisest thing to do if you’re living in hell is to make yourself comfortable.

Success is always dangerous. It can make an asshole out of anybody.

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

I was fighting a small fight of my own which wasn't leading _x000D_ anywhere-but like a man with a bent spoon trying to dig through a cement wall I knew that a small fight was better than quitting: it _x000D_ kept the heart alive.

Bad luck for the young poet would be a rich father, an early marriage, an early success or the ability to do anything well.

I've never been lonely. I like myself. I'm the best form of entertainment I have. Let's drink more wine!

You can forgive a fool because he only runs in one direction and doesn't deceive anybody. It's the deceivers who make you feel bad.

With me, my main vision for life was to avoid as many people as possible. The less people I saw the better I felt.

There would never be a way for me to live comfortably with people. Maybe I'd become a monk. I'd pretend to believe in God and live in a cubicle, play an organ and stay drunk on wine.

I got lost somehow, began staring up her legs. I was always a leg man. It was the first thing I saw when I was born. But then I was trying to get out. Ever since I have been working in the other direction and with pretty lousy luck.

As we go on with our lives we tend to forget that the jails and the hospitals and the madhouses and the graveyards are packed.

I am ashamed to be a member of the human race but I don't want to add any more to that shame, I want to scrape a little of it off.

The masses are always wrong...Wisdom is doing everything the crowd does not do. All you do is reverse the totality of their learning and you have the heaven they're looking for.