Charles Bukowski is one of my favorite writers. I love his raw, honest style of writing and clear, straight-to-the-point tone of voice. My favorite Charles Bukowski novel is Ham On Rye, although I love Post Office, too. And my favorite book of poetry by Charles Bukowski is Love Is A Dog From Hell. Over the years, I’ve gathered a list of my favorite, best Charles Bukowski quotes for your reading pleasure. Quotes about drinking (his favorite hobby), quotes about love and relationships, & quotes about life in general.
My list of the best Charles Bukowski quotes:
That’s the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.
Practice- that’s all it took. All a guy needed was a chance. Somebody was always controlling who got a chance, & who didn’t.
He taught me the meaning of pain. Pain without reason.
she was consumed by 3 simple things:
drink, despair, loneliness; and 2 more:
youth and beauty
If you’re losing your soul and you know it, then you’ve still got a soul left to lose.
I loved you like a man loves a woman he never touches, only writes to, keeps little photographs of.
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.
Great art is horseshit, buy tacos.
You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.
We’re all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.
I don’t care what they say after I’m dead. In fact, I hardly care what they say while I’m alive. I only write to help myself get through the weeks and the months and the years.
The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose, they sliced a little more off you, until there was nothing left. At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole goddamned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidate who reminded them most of themselves.
I hated them because they had something I had not yet had, and I said to myself, I said to myself again, someday I will be as happy as any of you, you will see.
We sat on a park bench and chewed the gum and I thought, well, now I have found something, I have found something that is going to help me, for a long time to come. The park grass looked greener, the park benches and the flowers were trying harder.
beware those who seek constant crowds for
they are nothing alone
Love breaks my bones
and I laugh
The tigers have found me and I do not care.
Boring damned people. All over the earth. Propagating more boring damned people. What a horror show. The earth swarmed with them.
A love like that was a serious illness, an illness from which you never entirely recover.
I went to the worst of bars hoping to get killed but all I could do was to get drunk again.
I want so much that is not here and do not know where to go.
It was like the beginning of life and laughter. It was the real meaning of the sun.
In the morning it was morning and I was still alive.
She’s mad, but she’s magic. There’s no lie in her fire.
Nobody can save you but yourself and you’re worth saving. It’s a war not easily won but if anything is worth winning then this is it.
So it’s always a process of letting go, one way or another.
nothing can save
you
except
writing.
it keeps the walls
from
failing.
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.”
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.
Some people like what you do, some people hate what you do, but most people simply don’t give a damn.
I guess the only time most people think about injustice is when it happens to them.
It was a joy! Words weren’t dull, words were things that could make your mind hum. If you read them and let yourself feel the magic, you could live without pain, with hope, no matter what happened to you.
Can you remember who you were, before the world told you who you should be?
Understand me. I’m not like an ordinary world. I have my madness, I live in another dimension and I do not have time for things that have no soul.
There is a place in the heart that will never be filled; a space. And even during the best moments, and the greatest times, we will know it.
The less I needed, the better I felt.
I want so much that is not here and do not know where to go.
I guess we often get the deep blues, both of us, and wonder what it all means – the people, the buildings, the day by day things, the waste of time, of ourselves.
Almost everybody is born a genius and buried an idiot.
Love breaks my bones & i laugh.
I don’t hate people, I just feel better when they aren’t around.
Without literature, life is hell.
