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Charles Bukowski Quotes - Page 26

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in the cupboard sits my bottle like a dwarf waiting to scratch out my prayers. I drink and cough like some idiot at a symphony, sunlight and maddened birds are everywhere, the phone rings gamboling its sound against the

in the cupboard sits my bottle like a dwarf waiting to scratch out my prayers. I drink and cough like some idiot at a symphony, sunlight and maddened birds are everywhere, the phone rings gamboling its sound against the odds of the crooked sea; I drink deeply and evenly now, I drink to paradise and death and the lie of love.

Charles Bukowski
Prayer, Lying, Drinking

hate contains truth. beauty is a facade.

Charles Bukowski
Hate, Facade

The writing's easy, it's the living that is sometimes difficult.

Charles Bukowski
Writing, Sometimes, Easy
Charles Bukowski (2003). “Sunlight Here I Am: Interviews and Encounters, 1963-1993”

The human race had always disgusted me. essentially, what made them disgusting was the family-relationship illness, which included marriage, exchange of power and aid, which neighborhood, your district, your city, your county, your state, your nation-everybody grabbing each other's assholes in the Honeycomb of survival out of a fear-animalistic stupidity.

Charles Bukowski
Cities, Race, Stupidity
Charles Bukowski (2013). “Tales of Ordinary Madness”, p.50, City Lights Books

I am aware that a computer can’t create a poem, but neither can a typewriter.

Charles Bukowski
Typewriters, Computer
Charles Bukowski (2002). “Il grande”, p.144, Feltrinelli Editore

If I stop writing I am dead. And that's the only way I'll stop: dead.

Charles Bukowski
Writing, Way, Ifs
Charles Bukowski (2003). “Sunlight Here I Am: Interviews and Encounters, 1963-1993”

it is good to be sitting some place in public at 2:30 in the afternoon without getting the flesh ripped from your bones.

Charles Bukowski
Sitting, Afternoon, Flesh

I was drawn to all the wrong things: I liked to drink, I was lazy, I didn't have a god, politics, ideas, ideals.

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

I write as a function. Without it I would fall ill and die. It's as much a part of one as the liver or intestine, and just about as glamorous.

Charles Bukowski
Fall, Writing, Function
Charles Bukowski (2008). “Charles Bukowski: portions from a wine-stained notebook : uncollected stories and essays, 1944-1990”, City Lights Publishers

Turgenev was a very serious fellow but he could make me laugh because a truth first encountered can be very funny. When someone else's truth is the same as your truth, and he seems to be saying it just for you, that's great.

Charles Bukowski
Laughing, Firsts, Serious
Charles Bukowski (2001). “Ham On Rye”, p.166, Canongate Books

I hope that death contains less than this.

Charles Bukowski

Trouble and pain were what kept a man alive. Or trying to avoid trouble and pain. It was a full time job.

Charles Bukowski
Jobs, Pain, Men

Angels, we have grown apart.

Charles Bukowski
Angel

I thought you were sane," I said, "but you're just as crazy as the rest of them.

Charles Bukowski
Crazy, Said, Sane

Everything is beautiful. We have all this beauty in the world and all we have to do is reach out and touch it, it is all there and all ours for the taking." -- Cecilia to Henry Chinaski, liberty taken changing past tense to present tense (173)

Charles Bukowski
Beautiful, Taken, Past

Some of my poems indicate that I am writing while living alone after a split with a woman, and I've had many splits with women. I need solitude more often when I'm not writing than when I am.

Charles Bukowski
Writing, Solitude, Needs
Charles Bukowski (2003). “Sunlight Here I Am: Interviews and Encounters, 1963-1993”

Sweet Christ, you must know that a man will go further for any poem than for any woman ever born.

Charles Bukowski
Sweet, Men, Christ
Charles Bukowski, David Calonne (2013). “Absence of the Hero”, p.58, City Lights Books

I do not like to work and have no trade but i do like to eat, so this is basic, the basic training of slaves to fear.

Charles Bukowski
Training, Slave, Basic Training

well, death says, as he walks by, I'm going to get you anyhow no matter what you've been: writer, cab-driver, pimp, butcher, sky-diver, I'm going to get you

Charles Bukowski
Sky, Pimp, Cab Drivers

The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose, they sliced a little bit more off you, until there was nothing left.

Charles Bukowski
Evil, Ham, Littles
Charles Bukowski (2001). “Ham On Rye”, p.192, Canongate Books

like the fox I run with the hunted and if I’m not the happiest man on earth I’m surely the luckiest man alive.

Charles Bukowski
Running, Men, Alive
Charles Bukowski (2012). “The Pleasures of the Damned: Selected Poems 1951-1993”, p.238, Canongate Books

I could never accept life as it was, I could never gobble down all its poisons bu there were parts, tenuous magic parts open for the asking.

Charles Bukowski
Magic, Poison, Asking
Charles Bukowski, “Let It Enfold You”

magic persists without us no matter what we may do to try to spoil it

Charles Bukowski
Magic, Trying, May
Charles Bukowski (2012). “The Pleasures of the Damned: Selected Poems 1951-1993”, p.317, Canongate Books

Fiction is an improvement on life

Charles Bukowski
Fiction, Improvement
Charles Bukowski (1978). “Women”

the whole world is caught in her glance and at last the universe is magnificent.

Charles Bukowski
World, Lasts, Caught

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