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Charles Bukowski Quotes - Page 14

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Careful poetry and careful people live only long enough to die safely.

Careful poetry and careful people live only long enough to die safely.

Charles Bukowski
Long, People, Enough

If there are junk yards in hell, love is the dog that guards the gates.

Charles Bukowski
Dog, Love Is, Junk

the grace is being able to like rock music, symphony music, jazz … anything that contains the original energy of joy.

Charles Bukowski
Rocks, Symphony, Joy
Charles Bukowski (2012). “The Pleasures of the Damned: Selected Poems 1951-1993”, p.437, Canongate Books

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.

Charles Bukowski
Mean, People, Waste
Charles Bukowski (2012). “Selected Letters Volume 2: 1965-1970”, p.109, Random House

I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there.

Charles Bukowski
Drinking, Jail, Bail

People who believe in politics are like people who believe in God: they are sucking wind through bent straws.

Charles Bukowski
Believe, Wind, People

There is something about writing poetry that brings a man close to the cliff's edge.

Charles Bukowski
Writing, Men, Cliffs
Charles Bukowski (2013). “Notes of a Dirty Old Man”, p.71, City Lights Books

There is nothing that teaches you more than regrouping after failure and moving on. Yet most people are stricken with fear. They fear failure so much that they fail. They are too conditioned, too used to being told what to do. It begins with the family, runs through school and goes into the business world.

Charles Bukowski
Running, Moving, School

if you get married they think you're finished and if you are without a woman they think you're incomplete.

Charles Bukowski
Marriage, Wedding, Thinking

The centuries are sprinkled with rare magic with divine creatures who help us get past the common and extraordinary ills that beset us

Charles Bukowski
Past, Magic, Helping
Charles Bukowski (2007). “Come On In!: New Poems”, p.268, Canongate Books

Love came hard and very seldom. When it did it was usually for the wrong reasons.

Charles Bukowski
Reason, Wrong Reasons, Hard
Charles Bukowski (1978). “Women”

not writing is not good but trying to write when you can't is worse.

Charles Bukowski
Writing, Trying

It’s not so much that nothing means anything but more that it keeps meaning nothing. there’s no release, just gurus and self- appointed gods and hucksters. the more people say, the less there is to say. even the best books are dry sawdust.

Charles Bukowski
Book, Mean, Self

Bad luck for the young poet would be a rich father, an early marriage, an early success or the ability to do anything well.

Charles Bukowski
Father, Luck, Would Be

Sexual intercourse is kicking death in the ass while singing.

Charles Bukowski
Funny, Sex, Humor
Charles Bukowski (2013). “Notes of a Dirty Old Man”, p.127, City Lights Books

The courage it took to get out of bed each morning to face the same things over and over was enormous.

Charles Bukowski
Morning, Bed, Faces

It seems I make a lot of mistakes and it seems that I am not allowed any.

Charles Bukowski
Mistake, Seems
Charles Bukowski, Seamus Cooney (1983). “The Bukowski Purdy letters: a decade of dialogue, 1964-1974”

she’s mad, but she’s magic.

Charles Bukowski
Mad, Magic
Charles Bukowski, “An Almost Made Up Poem”

It's 4:30 in the morning, it's always 4:30 in the morning.

Charles Bukowski
Morning
"Rooming House Madrigals". Book by Charles Bukowski, 1954.

I don't think I have written a poem when I was completely sober. But I have written a few good ones or a few bad ones under the hammer of a black hangover when I didn't know whether another drink or a blade would be the best thing.

Charles Bukowski
Hangover, Thinking, Black
Source: bukowski.net

my beerdrunk soul is sadder than all the dead christmas trees of the world.

Charles Bukowski
Tree, Soul, World

i am with the roots of flowers entwined, entombed sending up my passionate blossoms as a flight of rockets and argument; wine churls my throat, above me feet walk upon my brain, monkies fall from the sky clutching photographs of the planets, but i seek only music and the leisure of my pain

Charles Bukowski
Pain, Flower, Fall

The Laughing Heart your life is your life don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission. be on the watch. there are ways out. there is a light somewhere. it may not be much light but it beats the darkness. be on the watch. the gods will offer you chances. know them. take them. you can’t beat death but you can beat death in life, sometimes. and the more often you learn to do it, the more light there will be. your life is your life. know it while you have it. you are marvelous the gods wait to delight in you.

Charles Bukowski
Heart, Light, Laughing
Charles Bukowski, “The Laughing Heart”

If you want to create, you'll create.

Charles Bukowski
Want, Ifs

I wasn’t going anywhere and neither was the rest of the world. We were all just hanging around waiting to die and meanwhile doing little things to fill the space. Some of use weren’t even doing little things. We were vegetables.

Charles Bukowski
Vegetables, Space, Waiting

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