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Charles Bukowski Quotes - Page 16

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and love was lightning and remembrance

and love was lightning and remembrance

Charles Bukowski
Remembrance, And Love, Lightning
Charles Bukowski (2009). “The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems 1946-1966”, p.18, Harper Collins

I like to change liquor stores frequently because the clerks got to know your habits if you went in night and day and bought huge quantities. I could feel them wondering why I wasn't dead yet and it made me uncomfortable. They probably weren't thinking any such thing, but then a man gets paranoid when he has 300 hangovers a year.

Charles Bukowski
Drinking, Hangover, Night

So, that’s what they wanted: lies. Beautiful lies. That’s what they needed. People were fools. It was going to be easy for me.

Charles Bukowski
Beautiful, Lying, People
Charles Bukowski (2001). “Ham On Rye”, p.87, Canongate Books

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
Jobs, Passion, Firsts
Charles Bukowski (2009). “Factotum”, p.17, Harper Collins

If you want to know who your friends are, get yourself a jail sentence.

Charles Bukowski
Friendship, Jail, Interesting
Charles Bukowski (2013). “Notes of a Dirty Old Man”, p.128, City Lights Books

I grow tired of 18th century moralities in a 20th century space-atomic age

Charles Bukowski
Tired, Space, Age
Charles Bukowski (2003). “Sunlight Here I Am: Interviews and Encounters, 1963-1993”

young or old, good or bad, I don't think anything dies as slow and as hard as a writer.

Charles Bukowski
Thinking, Young, Dies

I could see the road ahead of me. I was poor and I was going to stay poor. But I didn't particularly want money. I didn't know what I wanted. Yes, I did. I wanted someplace to hide out, someplace where one didn't have to do anything. The thought of being something didn't only appall me, it sickened me . . . To do things, to be part of family picnics, Christmas, the 4th of July, Labor Day, Mother's Day . . . was a man born just to endure those things and then die? I would rather be a dishwasher, return alone to a tiny room and drink myself to sleep.

Charles Bukowski
Mother, 4th Of July, Sleep

Getting drunk was good. I decided that I would always like getting drunk. It took away the obvious and maybe if you could get away from the obvious often enough, you wouldn't become so obvious yourself.

Charles Bukowski
Drunk, Enough, Obvious

I met a genius on the train today about 6 years old, he sat beside me and as the train ran down along the coast we came to the ocean and then he looked at me and said, it’s not pretty.

Charles Bukowski
Ocean, Years, Genius
Charles Bukowski, “I Met A Genius”

Sometimes a man doesn’t know what to do about things and sometimes it’s best to lie very still and try not to think at all about anything.

Charles Bukowski
Lying, Men, Thinking
Charles Bukowski (2015). “On Cats”, p.38, Canongate Books

People don't need love. What they need is success in one form or another. It can be love but it needn't be.

Charles Bukowski
People, Deep Thought, Needs
"Factotum". Book by Charles Bukowski, Ch. 52, 1975.

I think I need a drink.' 'Almost everybody does only they don't know it.

Charles Bukowski
Drinking, Thinking, Alcohol
Charles Bukowski (2007). “Women”, Ecco

the last cigarettes are smoked, the loaves are sliced, and lest this be taken for wry sorrow, drown the spider in wine. you are much more than simply dead: I am a dish for your ashes, I am a fist for your vanished air. the most terrible thing about life is finding it gone.

Charles Bukowski
Taken, Wine, Air
Charles Bukowski (2009). “sifting through the madness for the word, the line, the way: New Poems”, p.101, Zondervan

pain is absurd because it exists, nothing more.

Charles Bukowski
Pain, Absurd
Charles Bukowski (2012). “The Pleasures of the Damned: Selected Poems 1951-1993”, p.144, Canongate Books

A woman is a full time job. You have to choose your profession.

Charles Bukowski
Jobs, Profession, Full Time Jobs

I’ve had so many knives stuck into me, when they hand me a flower I can’t quite make out what it is. It takes time.

Charles Bukowski
Flower, I Hate You, Hands

You are thirty minutes late." "Yes." "Would you be thirty minutes late to a wedding or a funeral?" "No." "Why not, pray tell?" "Well, if the funeral was mine I'd have to be on time. If the wedding was mine it would be my funeral.

Charles Bukowski
Funeral, Would Be, Why Not
Charles Bukowski (2001). “Ham On Rye”, p.249, Canongate Books

Pull a string, a puppet moves ... each man must realize that it can all disappear very quickly: the cat, the woman, the job, the front tire, the bed, the walls, the room; all our necessities including love, rest on foundations of sand - and any given cause, no matter how unrelated: the death of a boy in Hong Kong or a blizzard in Omaha ... can serve as your undoing. all your chinaware crashing to the kitchen floor, your girl will enter and you'll be standing, drunk, in the center of it and she'll ask: my god, what's the matter? and you'll answer: I don't know, I don't know.

Charles Bukowski
Girl, Jobs, Wall
Charles Bukowski, “Pull A String, A Puppet Moves”

there's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I'm too clever, I only let him out at night sometimes when everybody's asleep. I say, I know that you're there, so don't be sad. then I put him back, but he's singing a little in there, I haven't quite let him die and we sleep together like that with our secret pact and it's nice enough to make a man weep, but I don't weep, do you?

Charles Bukowski
Clever, Nice, Heart
Charles Bukowski (2016). “On Love”, p.207, Canongate Books

people are not good to each other. perhaps if they were our deaths would not be so sad.

Charles Bukowski
People, So Sad, Ifs
Charles Bukowski (2012). “The Pleasures of the Damned: Selected Poems 1951-1993”, p.224, Canongate Books

If you are going to try, go all the way or don't even start. If you follow it you will be alive with the gods. It is the only good fight there is.

Charles Bukowski
Fighting, Trying, Alive

If I have any advice to anybody it's this: take up watercolor painting.

Charles Bukowski
Giving, Advice, Painting
"Notes of a Dirty Old Man".

New Year's Eve always terrifies me.

Charles Bukowski
New Year, Years, New Year's Eve

Early evening traffic was beginning to clog the avenue with cars. The sun slanted down behind him. Harry glanced at the drivers of the cars. They seemed unhappy. The world was unhappy. People were in the dark. People were terrified and disappointed. People were caught in traps. People were defensive and frantic. They felt as if their lives were being wasted. And they were right.

Charles Bukowski
Dark, People, Car

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