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Charles Bukowski Quotes - Page 7

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Before my death I hope to obtain my life.

Before my death I hope to obtain my life.

Charles Bukowski
Charles Bukowski, “What Can We Do?”

There's music in everything, even defeat

Charles Bukowski
Defeat
Charles Bukowski (2015). “On Writing”, p.24, Canongate Books

I pretend to understand because I don't want anybody to be hurt

Charles Bukowski
Hurt, Want
Charles Bukowski (2009). “Hollywood”, p.29, Canongate Books

the tired sunsets and the tired people - it takes a lifetime to die and no time at all.

Charles Bukowski
Tired, Sunset, People

great writers are indecent people they live unfairly saving the best part for paper. good human beings save the world so that bastards like me can keep creating art, become immortal. if you read this after I am dead it means I made it.

Charles Bukowski
Art, Writing, Mean

I am a poem. There is no way out.

Charles Bukowski
Way
Charles Bukowski (2012). “Selected Letters Volume 2: 1965-1970”, p.199, Random House

I never write in the daytime. It's like running through the shopping mall with your clothes off. Everybody can see you. At night ... that's when you pull the tricks ... magic.

Charles Bukowski
Running, Writing, Night

Writing is something that you don't know how to do. You sit down and it's something that happens, or it may not happen. So, how can you teach anybody how to write? It's beyond me, because you yourself don't even know if you're going to be able to. I'm always worried, well, you know, every time I go upstairs with my wine bottle. Sometimes I'll sit at that typewriter for fifteen minutes, you know. I don't go up there to write. The typewriter's up there. If it doesn't start moving, I say, well this could be the night that I hit the dust.

Charles Bukowski
Fear, Moving, Wine

There may not be a hell, but those who judge may create one. I think people are over-taught. They are over-taught everything. You have to find out by what happens to you, how you will react. I'll have to use a strange term here... "good." I don't know where it comes from, but I feel that there's an ultimate strain of goodness born in each of us. I don't believe in God, but I believe in this "goodness" like a tube running through our bodies. It can be nurtured. It's always magic, when on a freeway packed with traffic, a stranger makes room for you to change lanes... it gives you hope.

Charles Bukowski
Running, Believe, Thinking

there is a loneliness in this world so great that you can see it in the slow movement of the hands of a clock

Charles Bukowski
Loneliness, Hands, Movement
Charles Bukowski (2012). “The Pleasures of the Damned: Selected Poems 1951-1993”, p.222, Canongate Books

Gradually I came to realize that my understanding of women goes only as far as the pleasure is concerned.

Charles Bukowski
Understanding, Realizing, Pleasure

I went to the worst of bars hoping to get killed but all I could do was to get drunk again.

Charles Bukowski
Funny, Suicide, Drinking
Charles Bukowski, “The Suicide Kid”

But my whole life has been a matter of fighting for one simple hour to do what I want to do. There was always something getting in the way of my getting to myself.

Charles Bukowski
Fighting, Simple, Want
Charles Bukowski (2009). “The Captain is Out to Lunch”, p.11, Harper Collins

Let it die. Let there be a new beginning. It’s awful. Goodnight.

Charles Bukowski
New Beginnings, Awful, Dies

Writing is like going to bed with a beautiful woman and afterwards she gets up, goes to her purse and gives me a handful of money.

Charles Bukowski
Beautiful, Writing, Giving

Genius might be the ability to say a profound thing in a simple way.

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

Dog is much admired by Man because he believes in the hand which feeds him. A perfect set-up. For 13 cents a day you've got a hired killer who thinks you are god. A dog can't tell a Nazi from a Republican from a Commie from a Democrat and, many times, neither can I.

Charles Bukowski
Dog, Believe, Men

I can almost understand why people leap from bridges.

Charles Bukowski
Bridges, People, Leap

An early taste of death is not necessarily a bad thing.

Charles Bukowski
Taste, Bad Things

unless the sun inside you is burning your gut, don't do it

Charles Bukowski
Burning, Sun, Bursting Out
Charles Bukowski (2009). “sifting through the madness for the word, the line, the way: New Poems”, p.4, Zondervan

You've got to know when to let a woman go if you want to keep her,and if you don't want to keep her you let her go anyhow so it's always a process of letting go, one way or the other.

Charles Bukowski
Letting Go, Want, Way

If you want to know where God is, ask a drunk.

Charles Bukowski
Drunk, Want, Knows

We are like roses that have never bothered to bloom when we should have bloomed and it is as if the sun has become disgusted with waiting

Charles Bukowski
Should Have, Rose, Waiting

The difference between a brave man and a coward is a coward thinks twice before jumping in the cage with a lion. The brave man doesn't know what a lion is. He just thinks he does.

Charles Bukowski
Men, Thinking, Jumping
"Notes of a Dirty Old Man". Book by Charles Bukowski, 1969.

There are times when those eyes inside your brain stare back at you.

Charles Bukowski
Eye, Brain, Realizing

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