Charles Bukowski Quotes

The trouble with a mask is it never changes

It was the poor part of town—small houses and courts with mailboxes full of spiders, mailboxes hanging by one nail, old women inside rolling cigarettes and chewing tobacco and humming to their canaries and watching you, an idiot lost in the rain.

dogs and angels are not
very far apart

"I've never been lonely. I've been in a room — I've felt suicidal. I've been depressed. I've felt awful — awful beyond all — but I never felt that one other person could enter that room and cure what was bothering me...or that any number of people could enter that room. In other words, loneliness is something I've never been bothered with because I've always had this terrible itch for solitude. It's being at a party, or at a stadium full of people cheering for something, that I might feel loneliness. I'll quote Ibsen, "The strongest men are the most alone." I've never thought, "Well, some beautiful blonde will come in here and give me a fuck-job, rub my balls, and I'll feel good." No, that won't help. You know the typical crowd, "Wow, it's Friday night, what are you going to do? Just sit there?" Well, yeah. Because there's nothing out there. It's stupidity. Stupid people mingling with stupid people. Let them stupidify themselves. I've never been bothered with the need to rush out into the night. I hid in bars, because I didn't want to hide in factories. That's all. Sorry for all the millions, but I've never been lonely. I like myself. I'm the best form of entertainment I have. Let's drink more wine!"

Sometimes I felt that I didn’t even know who I was. All right, I’m Nicky Belane. But check this. Somebody could yell out, ‘Hey, Harry! Harry Martel!’ and I’d most likely answer, ‘Yeah, what is it?’ I mean, I could be anybody, what does it matter?

Great art is horseshit, buy tacos.

Once a woman turns against you, forget it. They can love you, then something turns in them. They can watch you dying in a gutter, run over by a car, and they'll spit on you.

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

An intellectual is a man who says a simple thing in a difficult way; an artist is a man who says a difficult thing in a simple way.

If you're losing your soul and you know it, then you've still got a soul left to lose

I was a man who thrived on solitude; without it I was like another man without food or water. Each day without solitude weakened me. I took no pride in my solitude; but I was dependent on it. The darkness of the
room was like sunlight to me.

writers are desperate people and when they stop being desperate they stop being writers.

I loved you like a man loves a woman he never touches, only writes to, keeps little photographs of.

In the morning it was morning and I was still alive.

People empty me. I have to get away to refill.