When I begin to doubt my ability to work the word, I simply read another writer and know I have nothing to worry about. My contest is only with myself, to do it right, with power, and force, and delight, and gamble. - Charles Bukowski
Of course it's possible to love a human being if you don't know them too well. - Charles Bukowski
the tired sunsets and the tired people - it takes a lifetime to die and no time at all. - Charles Bukowski
Basically, that's why I wrote: to save my ass, to save my ass from the madhouse, from the streets, from myself. - Charles Bukowski
I carry death in my left pocket. Sometimes I take it out and talk to it: "Hello, baby, how you doing? When you coming for me? I'll be ready. - Charles Bukowski
there is a place in the heart thatwill never be filleda spaceand even during thebest momentsandthe greatest timestimeswe will know itwe will know itmore thaneverthere is a place in the heart thatwill never be filledandwe will waitandwaitin that space. - Charles Bukowski
I always felt it wouldpass.I listened to the charges against meknowing some of them to be truebut certainly notimportant enoughto become the target ofviolence, envy,vengeance.I thought it would surelypass. - Charles Bukowski
Sometimes things are just what they seem to be and that's all there is to it. - Charles Bukowski
Se necesitaban las mismas cosas: talento, cojones y estar en forma. Sólo que la forma era mental, espiritual. - Charles Bukowski
Ya got cigarettes? she asks. Yes, I say,I got cigarettes. Matches? she asks.Enough to burn Rome. Whiskey?Enough whiskey for a Mississippi River of pain. You drunk? Not yet. - Charles Bukowski
Why did I come here? I thought. Why is it always only a matter of choosing between something bad and something worse? - Charles Bukowski
It's all overrated, man. Sex is only a great thing if you're not getting any. - Charles Bukowski
we must bringour own lightto thedarkness. - Charles Bukowski
People need me. I fill them. If they can't see me for a while they get desperate, they get sick. But if I see them too often I get sick. It's hard to feed without getting fed. - Charles Bukowski
My heart is a thousand years old. I am not like other people. - Charles Bukowski
Without literature, life is hell. - Charles Bukowski
Love is for real men. - Charles Bukowski
the way to create art is to burn and destroyordinary concepts and to substitute themwith new truths that run down from the top of the headand out of the heart - Charles Bukowski
Poetry is what happens when nothing else can. - Charles Bukowski
but it seems that the most beautiful women always go for the most horrible shits, the most obvious fakes. - Charles Bukowski
There's too much coldness in the world," I told her. "If people would only talk things out together it would help. - Charles Bukowski
There is a blue bird in my heart that wants to get out. - Charles Bukowski
when Whitman wrote, I sing the body electricI know what hemeantI know what hewanted:to be completely alive every momentin spite of the inevitable.we can’t cheat death but we can make itwork so hardthat when it does takeusit will have known a victory just asperfect asours - Charles Bukowski
Most so-called brave people lack imagination. As though they can’t conceive of what would happen if something went wrong. The truly brave overcome their imagination and do what they have to do. 2 - Charles Bukowski
We don’t even ask happiness, just a little less pain. - Charles Bukowski
where some god pissed a rain of reason to make things grow only to die, - Charles Bukowski
Medju nama nije bilo nikakve veze, osim sto smo pili i vodili ljubav. - Charles Bukowski
I heard an airplane passing overhead. I wished I was on it. - Charles Bukowski
There is nothing worse than being broke and having your woman leave you. Nothing to drink, no job,just the walls, sitting there staring at the walls and thinking. That's how women got back at you, but it hurt and weakened them too. Or so I like to believe. - Charles Bukowski
People are strange: They are constantly angered by trivial things, but on a major matter like totally wasting their lives, they hardly seem to notice. - Charles Bukowski
If something burns your soul with purpose and desire, it’s your duty to be reduced to ashes by it. Any other form of existence will be yet another dull book in the library of life. - Charles Bukowski
Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead. - Charles Bukowski
I think that everything should be made available to everybody, and I mean LSD, cocaine, codeine, grass, opium, the works. Nothing on earth available to any man should be confiscated and made unlawful by other men in more seemingly powerful and advantageous positions. - Charles Bukowski
There is nothing that teaches you more than regrouping after failure ad moving on. Yet most people are stricken wth fear. They fear failure so much that they fail. - Charles Bukowski
all people start tocome apart finallyand there it is:just empty ashtrays in a roomor wisps of hair on a combin the dissolving moonlight. - Charles Bukowski
the impossibility of being humanall too humanthis breathingin and outout and inthese punksthese cowardsthese championsthese mad dogs of glorymoving this little bit of light towardusimpossibly. - Charles Bukowski
that your power of commandwith simple language wasone of the magnificent things ofour century.(from the poem: result) - Charles Bukowski
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. - Charles Bukowski
Mëso të mos e shkatërrosh me fjalë atë çfarë ke ndërtuar me heshtje. - Charles Bukowski
as a childi supposei was not quitenormal.my happiest times werewheni was left alone inthe house on asaturday. - Charles Bukowski
There is a quality about women who choosemen sparingly;it appears in their walkin their eyesin their laughter and in theirgentle hearts. - Charles Bukowski
She's mad, but she's magic. There's no lie in her fire. - Charles Bukowski
when I am feelinglowall i have to do iswatch my catsand mycouragereturns - Charles Bukowski
the flesh covers the bone and they put a mind in there and sometimes a soul, and the women break vases against the walls and the men drink too much and nobody finds the one but keep looking crawling in and out of beds. flesh covers the bone and the flesh searches for more than flesh. - Charles Bukowski
unless the sun inside you is burning your gut, don't do it - Charles Bukowski
When someone else's truth is the same as your truth, and he seems to be saying it just for you, that's great. - Charles Bukowski
beware those quick to praise for they need praise in return beware those who are quick to censor they are afraid of what they do not know beware those who seek constant crowds for they are nothing alone - Charles Bukowski
Sex is kicking death in the ass while singing. - Charles Bukowski
I went to the worst of bars hoping to get killed but all I could do was to get drunk again. - Charles Bukowski
Sometimes you just have to pee in the sink. - Charles Bukowski
Find what you love and let it kill you. - Charles Bukowski
nothing can save you except writing. it keeps the walls from failing. - Charles Bukowski
the grace is being able to like rock music,symphony music, jazz …anything that contains the original energy ofjoy. - Charles Bukowski
Music is much like fucking, but some composers can't climax and others climax too often, leaving themselves and the listener jaded and spent. - Charles Bukowski
and our few good times will be rare because we have the critical senseand are not easy to fool with laughter - Charles Bukowski
my mother, poor fish,wanting to be happy, beaten two or three times aweek, telling me to be happy: "Henry, smile!why don't you ever smile?"and then she would smile, to show me how, and it was thesaddest smile I ever saw - Charles Bukowski
I canalmost understandwhypeopleleapfrombridges. - Charles Bukowski
there are so many dayswhen living stops and pulls up and sitsand waits like a train on the rails. - Charles Bukowski
You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics. - Charles Bukowski
I was alone with myself. And disgusting as I was it was better than being with somebody else, anybody else, all of them out there doing their pitiful little tricks and handsprings. - Charles Bukowski
Walking out with the people, I didn't know which was more exciting, the air race, the parachute jump that failed, or the cunt. - Charles Bukowski
The old gal was only another lonely creature in a world that didn’t care - Charles Bukowski
my beerdrunk soul is sadder than all the dead christmas trees of the world. - Charles Bukowski
I have one problem, I don’t hate people. They disgust me and I want to get away from them. I do not have hatred. I have an escape mechanism. - Charles Bukowski
If you have the ability to love, love yourself first. - Charles Bukowski
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. - Charles Bukowski
I don't hate people, I just feel better when they aren't around. - Charles Bukowski
If I bet on humanity, I'd never cash a ticket. - Charles Bukowski
There's a light somewhere.It may not be much light butit beats the darkness. - Charles Bukowski
Education was the new god, and educated men the new plantation masters. - Charles Bukowski
I do think that poetry is important though, if you don’t strive at it, if you don’t fill it full of stars and falseness. - Charles Bukowski
what you werewill not happen again.the tigers have found meand I do not care. - Charles Bukowski
people who eat 3 meals a day throughout lifehave never reallytastedFood... - Charles Bukowski
take a writer away from his typewriterand all you have leftisthe sicknesswhich started himtypingin thebeginning - Charles Bukowski
Che razza di investigatore sei?" fece lui."Il migliore di L.A.""Ah sì? E che cosa vuol dire L.A.?""Leccatori d'Ano". - Charles Bukowski
Ne të gjithë jemi duke shkuar për të vdekur, të gjithë ne, çfarë cirku! Kjo vetë duhet të na bëjë ta duam njëri-tjetrin, por kjo nuk e bën. Ne jemi të terrorizuar dhe të rrafshuar nga trivialiteti, ne jemi duke u ngrënë nga asgjëja. - Charles Bukowski
Hey, Hank, I notice all the women around your place lately ... good looking stuff; you're doing all right.""Sam," I say, "that's not true; I am one of God's most lonely men. - Charles Bukowski
Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I'm not going to make it, but you laugh inside — remembering all the times you've felt that way. - Charles Bukowski
Don’t ever write a novel unless it hurts like a hot turd coming out - Charles Bukowski
...still, I’m lucky: I feast on solitude, I will never miss the crowd. I could read the great books but the great books don’t interest me. I sit in bed and wait for the whole thing to go one way or the other. just like everybody else. - Charles Bukowski
The ass is the face of the soul of sex. - Charles Bukowski
That’s when I first learned that it wasn’t enough to just do your job, you had to have an interest in it, even a passion for it. - Charles Bukowski
be it peace or happinesslet it enfold you - Charles Bukowski
The writer has no responsibility other than to jack off in bed alone and write a good page. - Charles Bukowski
A man needed somebody. There wasn't anybody around, so you had to make up somebody, make him up to be like a man should be. It wasn't make-believe or cheating. The other way was make-believe and cheating: living your life without a man like him around. - Charles Bukowski
The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don't have to waste your time voting. - Charles Bukowski
An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way. - Charles Bukowski
Most so-called brave people lack imagination. As though they can’t conceive of what would happen if something went wrong. The truly brave overcome their imagination and do what they have to do. - Charles Bukowski
Born into thisInto hospitals which are so expensive that it's cheaper to dieInto lawyers who charge so much it's cheaper to plead guiltyInto a country where the jails are full and the madhouses closedInto a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes... - Charles Bukowski