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Charles Bukowski Quotes - Page 19

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I only want sweet peace and kindliness when I awaken -- but there's always some finger pointing, telling me some terrible deed I committed during the night. It seems I make a lot of mistakes and it seems that I am not

I only want sweet peace and kindliness when I awaken -- but there's always some finger pointing, telling me some terrible deed I committed during the night. It seems I make a lot of mistakes and it seems that I am not allowed any.

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

There's nothing to mourn about death any more than there is to mourn about the growing of a flower. What is terrible is not death but the lives people live or don't live up until their death. They don't honor their own lives ... their minds are full of cotton. They swallow God without thinking, they swallow country without thinking. Soon they forget how to think, they let others think for them.... Most people's deaths are a sham. There's nothing left to die.

Charles Bukowski
Death, Country, Flower
"The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors have taken over the Ship". Book by Charles Bukowski, 1998.

there is enough treachery, hatred violence absurdity in the average human being to supply any given army on any given day and the best at murder are those who preach against it and the best at hate are those who preach love and the best at war finally are those who preach peace

Charles Bukowski
Hate, War, Army
Charles Bukowski (2012). “The Pleasures of the Damned: Selected Poems 1951-1993”, p.148, Canongate Books

The human body is mostly blood and mystery and sadness.

Charles Bukowski
Sadness, Blood, Body

People just weren't interesting. Maybe they weren't supposed to be. But animals, birds, even insects were. I couldn't understand it.

Charles Bukowski
Animal, People, Interesting
Charles Bukowski (2009). “Hollywood”, p.178, Canongate Books

...having nothing to struggle against they have nothing to struggle for.

Charles Bukowski
Struggle

Sex can sometimes become the most horrible of tasks.

Charles Bukowski
Sex, Tasks, Sometimes

I'm going, she said. I love you but you're crazy, you're doomed.

Charles Bukowski
Crazy, Love You, Said
Charles Bukowski (2016). “On Love”, p.122, Canongate Books

… and we are in bed together laughing and we don’t care about anything.

Charles Bukowski
Laughing, Together, Bed

Do some living and get yourself a typewriter.

Charles Bukowski
Typewriters
Charles Bukowski (2015). “On Writing”, p.1, Canongate Books

If you can only remain pure in your stupidity, someday you may get a phone call from hell.

Charles Bukowski
Phones, Stupidity, Phone Calls
Charles Bukowski (2009). “Hollywood”, p.27, Canongate Books

It was better for me when I could imagine greatness in others, even if it wasn't always there.

Charles Bukowski
Greatness, Imagine, Ifs

I've learned to feel good when I feel good. it's better to be driven around in a red porsche than to own one. the luck of the fool is inviolate.

Charles Bukowski
Feel Good, Luck, Red

Sometimes there's luck, When there is you stock up on it and wait for the other times

Charles Bukowski
Waiting, Luck, Sometimes

It was too much. The comfortable people made comfortable jokes about weather and things but I sat mostly silent saying a word or so when necessary a word or so trying to hide from them the fact that I was a fool and feeling terrible And I was numb, numb again, numb again again and again, numbness and pain swelling in me.

Charles Bukowski
Pain, Numbness, Weather

Don’t do it. Don’t love me.

Charles Bukowski

I was naturally a loner, content just to live with a woman, eat with her, sleep with her, walk down the street with her. I didn't want conversation, or to go anywhere except the racetrack or the boxing matches. I didn't understand t.v. I felt foolish paying money to go into a movie theatre and sit with other people to share their emotions. Parties sickened me. I hated the game-playing, the dirty play, the flirting, the amateur drunks, the bores.

Charles Bukowski
Party, Dirty, Sleep

There were always men looking for jobs in America. There were always all these usable bodies. And I wanted to be a writer. Almost everybody was a writer. Not everybody thought they could be a dentist or an automobile mechanic but everybody knew they could be a writer. Of those fifty guys in the room, probably fifteen of them thought they were writers. Almost everybody used words and could write them down, i.e., almost everybody could be a writer. But most men, fortunately, aren't writers, or even cab drivers, and some men - many men - unfortunately aren't anything.

Charles Bukowski
Jobs, Writing, Men
"Factotum". Book by Charles Bukowski, Ch. 73, 1975.

writing about a writer's block is better than not writing at all

Charles Bukowski
Block, Writing, Writers Block

In New York you've got to have all the luck.

Charles Bukowski
New York, Luck, Old New York
Charles Bukowski (2013). “Notes of a Dirty Old Man”, p.27, City Lights Books

bad writing's like bad women: there's just not much you can do about it

Charles Bukowski
Writing, Bad Writing, Bad Woman
Charles Bukowski (2013). “Tales of Ordinary Madness”, p.131, City Lights Books

sometimes I hate you," she said.

Charles Bukowski
Hate, Sometimes, Said

I'm not the cruel type, but they are, and that's the secret.

Charles Bukowski
Secret, Type
Charles Bukowski (2013). “Tales of Ordinary Madness”, p.58, City Lights Books

There would never be a way for me to live comfortably with people. Maybe I'd become a monk. I'd pretend to believe in God and live in a cubicle, play an organ and stay drunk on wine.

Charles Bukowski
Believe, Wine, Play
Charles Bukowski (2001). “Ham On Rye”, p.182, Canongate Books

yes, Wagner and the storm intermix with the wine as nights like this run up my wrists and up into my head and back down into the gut

Charles Bukowski
Running, Wine, Night
Charles Bukowski (2012). “The Pleasures of the Damned: Selected Poems 1951-1993”, p.116, Canongate Books

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