My list of the best Charles Bukowski quotes from the poet laureate himself. Bukowski quotes about life, love, drinking, writing & more.
About
For a moment, her heart stood still and then a queer fear, stronger than anxiety, stronger than grief, began to beat in her breast. It can’t be true, she thought vehemently, trying to push back the fear. Doctors make mistakes. I won’t think it’s true. I can’t let myself think it’s true. I’ll scream if I do. I must think of something else.
The longer she lived in San Viejo, the more she appreciated the kind of things that went with living. Like having a window open when you slept, and grass, and tortillas. Being happy when people came to visit, and being happy when they left. The way certain things felt wonderful when you held them in your hands: a book, an ax, a baby, a beer, a big-ass pile of M&M’s.
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.
— Charles Bukowski, An Almost Made Up Poem
But what we are is what our ancestors did. How they survived. We are the memories we don’t remember, which live in us, which we feel, which make us sing and dance and pray the way we do, feelings from memories that flare and bloom unexpectedly in our lives like blood through a blanket from a wound made by a bullet fired by a man shooting us in the back for our hair, for our heads, for a bounty, or just to get rid of us.
I didn’t pay a hell of a lot of attention to grammar, and when I write it is for the love of the word, the color, like tossing paint on a canvas, and using a lot of ear and having read a bit here and there, I generally come out ok, but technically I don’t know what’s happening, nor do I care.
— Charles Bukowski