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Charles Bukowski Quotes - Page 24

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There is nothing as boring as the truth.

There is nothing as boring as the truth.

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

People do too much. They say too much.

Charles Bukowski
People, Too Much

I was an Agnostic. Agnostics didn't have much to argue about.

Charles Bukowski
Arguing, Agnostic

The apartment was built at the edge of a high cliff so that when you looked out the back window it seemed as if you were twelve floors up instead of four. It was very much like living on the edge of the world - a last resting place before the final big drop.

Charles Bukowski
Twelve, Finals, World

I suppose like others I have come through fire and sword, love gone wrong, head-on crashes, drunk at sea, and I have listened to the simple sound of water running in tubs and wished to drown

Charles Bukowski
Running, Simple, Sea
Charles Bukowski (2012). “The Pleasures of the Damned: Selected Poems 1951-1993”, p.60, Canongate Books

Modern women ... they don't sew your pockets ... forget that.

Charles Bukowski
Women, Pockets, Modern Woman

There is only one place to write and that is alone at a typewriter. The writer who has to go into the streets is a writer who does not know the streets. . . when you leave your typewriter you leave your machine gun and the rats come pouring through.

Charles Bukowski
Writing, Gun, Typewriters

Disneyland remains the central attraction of Southern California, but the graveyard remains our reality.

Charles Bukowski
Reality, California, Southern
Charles Bukowski (2003). “Sunlight Here I Am: Interviews and Encounters, 1963-1993”

I held her wrists and then I got it through the eyes: hatred, centuries deep and true. I was wrong and graceless and sick. all the things I had learned had been wasted. there was no creature living as foul as I and all my poems were false.

Charles Bukowski
Eye, Sick, Hatred
Charles Bukowski, “I'm In Love”

First paycheck I get, I thought, I'm going to get myself a room near the downtown L.A. Public Library.

Charles Bukowski
Library, Downtown, Rooms

There's a small balcony here, the door is open and I can see the lights of the cars on the Harbor Freeway south, they never stop, that roll of lights, on and on. All those people. What are they doing? What are they thinking? We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't.

Charles Bukowski
Thinking, Light, Doors
Charles Bukowski (2009). “The Captain is Out to Lunch”, p.10, Harper Collins

Long before I became 'rich and famous' I just sat round drinking wine and staring at the walls.

Charles Bukowski
Wall, Drinking, Wine

there's no chance at all: we are all trapped by a singular fate.

Charles Bukowski
Fate, Chance, Trapped
Charles Bukowski, “Alone With Everybody”

That moment - to this ... may be years in the way they measure, but it's only one sentence back in my mind - there are so many days when living stops and pulls up and sits and waits like a train on the rails. I pass the hotel at 8 and at 5; there are cats in the alleys and bottles and bums, and I look up at the window and think, I no longer know where you are, and I walk on and wonder where the living goes when it stops.

Charles Bukowski
Cat, Thinking, Years
Charles Bukowski (2016). “On Love”, p.9, Canongate Books

they say that nothing is wasted: either that or it al is

Charles Bukowski
Als
Charles Bukowski (2012). “The Pleasures of the Damned: Selected Poems 1951-1993”, p.7, Canongate Books

As we go on with our lives we tend to forget that the jails and the hospitals and the madhouses and the graveyards are packed.

Charles Bukowski
Jail, Goes On, Forget

The whole LSD, STP, marijuana, heroin, hashish, prescription cough medicine crowd suffers from the "Watchtower" itch: you gotta be with us, man, or you're out, you're dead. This pitch is a continual and seeming MUST with those who use the stuff. It's no wonder they keep getting busted.

Charles Bukowski
Marijuana, Men, Medicine
Charles Bukowski (2013). “Tales of Ordinary Madness”, p.205, City Lights Books

But then if you lied to a man about his talent just because he was sitting across from you, that was the most unforgivable lie of them all, because that was telling him to go on, to continue which was the worst way for a man without real talent to waste his life, finally. But many people did just that, friends and relatives mostly.

Charles Bukowski
Real, Lying, Men
Charles Bukowski (2007). “Women”, Ecco

Well, we lost it, and that’s all there is to that.

Charles Bukowski
Lost, Wells

What's wrong with assholes, baby?

Charles Bukowski
Baby
Charles Bukowski (2014). “Charles Bukowski Fiction Collection”, Harper Collins

What a weary time those years were -- to have the desire and the need to live but not the ability.

Charles Bukowski
Years, Desire, Needs
Charles Bukowski (2001). “Ham On Rye”, p.238, Canongate Books

We waste days like mad blackbirds and pray for alcoholic nightsour silk-sick human smiles wrap around us like somebody else's confetti

Charles Bukowski
Mad, Sick, Bird
Charles Bukowski (2012). “The Pleasures of the Damned: Selected Poems 1951-1993”, p.235, Canongate Books

This is a world where everybody’s gotta do something. Ya know, somebody laid down this rule that everybody’s gotta do something, they gotta be something. You know, a dentist, a glider pilot, a narc, a janitor, a preacher, all that . . . Sometimes I just get tired of thinking of all the things that I don’t wanna do. All the things that I don’t wanna be. Places I don’t wanna go, like India, like getting my teeth cleaned. Save the whale, all that, I don’t understand that . . .

Charles Bukowski
Tired, Thinking, Whales

My part of the game is that I must live the best I can.

Charles Bukowski
Games, I Can

Never trust a man in a jumpsuit

Charles Bukowski
Men, Never Trust, Never Trust A Man

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