Explore Quotes by Charles Bukowski

The worst men have the best jobs _x000D_ the best men have the worst jobs or are _x000D_ unemployed or locked in _x000D_ madhouses.

If I hadn't been a drunkard, I probably would have committed suicide long ago.

If I'm an ass, I should say so. If I don't, somebody else will. If I say it first, that disarms them.

Everything was a trap: women, drugs, whiskey, wine, scotch, beer - even beer - cigars, and cigarettes. Traps: Work or no work. Traps: Artistry or no artistry; everything sucked you into some spiderweb. I disdained the use of the needle for the same reason that I disdained some so-called beautiful women - the price was far beyond the measure of the worth. I didn't want to hustle that hard.

No matter how little a man has he will find that he will always settle for less.

The nine-to-five is one of the greatest atrocities sprung upon mankind. You give your life to a function that doesn't interest you. This situation so repelled me that I was driven to drink, starvation, and mad females, simply as an alternative.

This incompleteness is all we have.

The shortest distance between two points is often unbearable.

Style is the answer to everything. A fresh way to approach a dull or dangerous thing

Without literature, life is hell.

I see men assassinated around me every day. I walk through rooms of the dead, streets of the dead, cities of the dead; men without eyes, men without voices; men with manufactured feelings and standard reactions; men with newspaper brains, television souls and high school ideas.

Cautiously, I allowed myself to feel good at times. I found moments of peace in cheap rooms just staring at the knobs of some dresser or listening to the rain in the dark. The less I needed the better I felt.

If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start.

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

And don't forget: time is meant to be wasted, love fails and death is useless.

There's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out.

Something that never happens anywhere at any time.

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.

Well, people got attatched. Once you cut the umbilical cord they attatched to the other things. Sight, sound, sex, money, mirages, mothers, masturbation, murder, and Monday morning hangovers.

Thanksgiving. It proved you had survived another year with its wars, inflation, unemployment, smog, presidents. It was a grand neurotic gathering of clans: loud drunks, grandmothers, sisters, aunts, screaming children, would-be suicides. And don't forget indigestion. I wasn't different from anyone else: There sat the 18-pound bird on my sink, dead, plucked, totally disemboweled. Iris would roast it for me.

Some people like what you do, some people hate what you do, but most people simply don't give a damn.