Top 45 Charles Bukowski Quotes On Life And Love
It is said that life becomes much more beautiful when you have someone to share it with. In other words, love is a feeling that completes a person’s life.
Renowned author and love guru Charles Bukowski also believed in this theory and that showed in his famous quotes.
These quotes not only brought forth the mystery of life but also unravelled the beauty of love in it. We went through some of his amazing quotes and compiled a list of 45 of them.
The quotes are heart touching and show you what a wonderful feeling love is. If you are already in love you cannot just stop gushing at the reality of these quotes.
1. “I carry death in my left pocket. Sometimes I take it out and talk to it: “Hello, baby, how are you doing? When you come for me? I’ll be ready.”
— Charles Bukowski
2. “I’ve never been lonely. I’ve been in a room — I’ve felt suicidal. I’ve been depressed. I’ve felt awful — awful beyond all — but I never felt that one other person could enter that room and cure what was bothering me…or that any number of people could enter that room. In other words, loneliness is something I’ve never been bothered with because I’ve always had this terrible itch for solitude. It’s being at a party, or at a stadium full of people cheering for something, that I might feel loneliness. I’ll quote Ibsen, “The strongest men are the most alone.” I’ve never thought, “Well, some beautiful blonde will come in here and give me a fuck-job, rub my balls, and I’ll feel good.” No, that won’t help. You know the typical crowd, “Wow, it’s Friday night, what are you going to do? Just sit there?” Well, yeah. Because there’s nothing out there. It’s stupidity. Stupid people mingling with stupid people. Let them stupidity themselves. I’ve never been bothered with the need to rush out into the night. I hid in bars because I didn’t want to hide in factories. That’s all. Sorry for all the millions, but I’ve never been lonely. I like myself. I’m the best form of entertainment I have. Let’s drink more wine!”
— Charles Bukowski
3. “He asked, “What makes a man a writer?” “Well,” I said, “it’s simple. You either get it down on paper or jump off a bridge.”
— Charles Bukowski
4. “Can you remember who you were before the world told you who you should be?”
— Charles Bukowski
5. “After dinner or lunch or whatever it was — with my crazy 12-hour night I was no longer sure what was what — I said, “Look, baby, I’m sorry, but don’t you realize that this job is driving me crazy? Look, let’s give it up. Let’s just lay around and make love and take walks and talk a little. Let’s go to the zoo. Let’s look at animals. Let’s drive down and look at the ocean. It’s only 45 minutes. Let’s play games in the arcades. Let’s go to the races, the Art Museum, the boxing matches. Let’s have friends. Let’s laugh. This kind of life like everybody else’s kind of life: it’s killing us.”
— Charles Bukowski
6. “I thought you were sane,” I said, “but you’re just as crazy as the rest of them.”
— Charles Bukowski
7. “I knew I was strong, and maybe like they said, “crazy.” But I had this feeling inside of me that something real was there.”
— Charles Bukowski
8. “the worst thing,” he told me, is bitterness, people end up so bitter.”
— Charles Bukowski
9. “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
10. “Humanity, you never had it from the beginning.” That was my motto.”
— Charles Bukowski
11. “Somebody at one of these places asked me: “What do you do? How do you write, create?” You don’t, I told them. You “don’t try”. That’s very important: not to try, either for Cadillacs, creation or immortality. You wait, and if nothing happens, you wait some more. It’s like a bug high on the wall. You wait for it to come to you. When it gets close enough you reach out, slap out and kill it. Or if you like its looks, you make a pet out of it.
— Charles Bukowski
12. “show me a man who lives alone and has a perpetually dirty kitchen, and 5 times out of 9 I’ll show you an exceptional man.” “show me a man who lives alone and has a perpetually clean kitchen, and 8 times out of 9 I’ll show you a man with detestable spiritual qualities.”
— Charles Bukowski
13. “A woman must be nursed into subsistence by love, where a man can become stronger by being hated.” – from ‘Cows in Art Class”
— Charles Bukowski
14. “Potential,” I said, “doesn’t mean a thing. You’ve got to do it. Almost every baby in a crib has more potential than I have.”
— Charles Bukowski
15. “Your writing”, she said to me, “it’s so raw. It’s like a sledgehammer, and yet it has humor and tenderness.”
— Charles Bukowski
16. “The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts while the stupid one is full of confidence”.”
— Charles Bukowski
17. “The ocean,” I said, “look at it out there, battering, crawling up and down. And underneath all that, the fish, the poor fish fighting each other, eating each other. We’re like those fish, only we’re up here. One bad move and you’re finished. It’s nice to be a champion. It’s nice to know your moves.”
— Charles Bukowski
18. “there was a soldier in the next room living with his wife and he would soon be going over there to protect me from Hitler so I snapped the radio off and then heard his wife say, “you shouldn’t have done that.” and the soldier said, “FUCK THAT GUY!” which I thought was a very nice thing for him to tell his wife to do. of course, she never did.”
— Charles Bukowski
19. “Lydia came back to bed. We didn’t kiss each other. We weren’t going to have sex. I felt weary. I listened to the crickets. I don’t know how much time went by. I was almost asleep, not quite, when Lydia suddenly sat straight up in bed. And she screamed. It was a loud scream. “What is it?” I asked. “Be quiet.” I waited. Lydia sat there without moving, for what seemed to be about ten minutes. Then she fell back on her pillow. “I saw God,” she said, “I just saw God.” “Listen, you bitch, you are going to drive me crazy!”
— Charles Bukowski
20. “I dunno,” I said, “but I have an idea that people who don’t think too much tend to look younger longer”
— Charles Bukowski
21. “Baby,” I said, “I’m a genius but nobody knows it but me. She looked down at me. “Get up off the floor you damn fool and get me a drink.”
— Charles Bukowski
22. “The Artist,” an ancient sage had once said, “is always sitting on the doorsteps of the rich.”
— Charles Bukowski
23. “Sometimes things are just what they seem to be and that’s all there is to it.”
— Charles Bukowski
24. “You’re afraid of the audience, aren’t you? Yes, but it’s not staging fright. It’s that I’m there as a geek. They like to watch me eat my shit. But it pays the light bill and takes me to the racetrack. I don’t have any excuses about why I do it.”
— Charles Bukowski
25. “What good are you? What can you do? It has cost me thousands of dollars to raise you, feed you, clothe you! Suppose I left you here on the street? Then what would you do? Catch butterflies”
— Charles Bukowski
26. “Hey, Hank, I notice all the women around your place lately. good looking stuff; you’re doing all right.”Sam,” I say, “that’s not true; I am one of God’s most lonely men.”
— Charles Bukowski
27. “Some men are crazy,” I said, moving toward the door. What do you mean? I mean, some men are in love with their wives.”
— Charles Bukowski
28. “Lydia screamed. The car began to swerve all over the street. “YOU SON-OF-A-BITCH! I KILL YOU!” She crossed the double yellow line at high speed, directly into oncoming traffic. Horns sounded and cars scattered. We drove on against the flow of traffic, cars approaching us peeling off to the left and right. Then just as abruptly Lydia swerved back across the double line into the lane we had just vacated. Where are the police? I thought. Why is it that when Lydia does something the police become nonexistent?”
— Charles Bukowski
29. “You’re all there,” she said. “What do you mean?” “I mean, I never met a man like you.” “Oh, yeah?” “The others are only ten percent there or twenty percent, you’re all there, all of you is very there, it’s so different.” “I don’t know anything about it.” “You’re a hooker, you can hook women.”
— Charles Bukowski
30. “Zemër”, i thash, “Unë jam një gjeni por askush nuk e di këtë, përpos unë.”
— Charles Bukowski
31. “I emit, I hiss a rather tired and gentle word like “shit”, then tear this page from the machine. it’s you.”
— Charles Bukowski
32. “Henry Chinaski”, the principal said over the microphone. And I walked forward. There was no applause. The one kindly soul in the audience gave two or three clasps.”
— Charles Bukowski
33. “There’s too much coldness in the world,” I told her. “If people would only talk things out together it would help.”
— Charles Bukowski
34. “Baby,” I said, “I’m a genius but nobody knows it but me. She looked down at me. “Get up off the floor you damn fool and get me a drink.”
— Charles Bukowski
35. “Ma l’aspetto positivo dell’essere un ubriacone è che non eri mai stitico. A volte pensavo al fegato, ma lui non parlava mai, non diceva mai: “Smettila tu stai ammazzando me io ammazzerò te ” Se avessimo il fegato parlante non avremmo bisogno degli Alcolisti Anonimi.”
— Charles Bukowski
36. “Tinha o cartão Gold Visa. Estava vivo. Talvez. Começava até a me sentir como Nick Belane. Cantalorei um trechinho de Coats. O Inferno era o que a gente fazia dele.” (pág. 16)”
— Charles Bukowski
37. “cuando estaba en buena forma espiritual, después de comer lavaba el plato inmediatamente”.”
— Charles Bukowski
38. “The reason so much bad poetry is written is that it is written as poetry instead of concept. And the reason the public doesn’t understand poetry is that there is nothing to understand, and the reason most poets write it is that they think they understand. Nothing is to be understood or “regained.” It is simply to be written. By someone. Sometime. And not too often.”
— Charles Bukowski
39. “Then I heard a man scream from the next ward, “Joe, where are you? Joe, you said you’d come back! Joe, where are you?” The voice was loud and so sad, so agonized. Joe wasn’t coming. It didn’t pay to trust another human being. Humans didn’t have it, whatever it took.”
— Charles Bukowski
40. “I stopped looking for a Dream Girl, I just wanted one that wasn’t a nightmare.” “I don’t hate people. I just feel better when they aren’t around.”
— Charles Bukowski
41. “Don’t you want to be happy, Henry?” asked my mother. “You never smile. Smile and be happy.”
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself,” said my father. “Be a man!”
“Smile, Henry!”
— Charles Bukowski
42. “Podigao sam piće i kresnuo ga niz grlo. Pa izvukao novčanicu. Uzeo sam limun pa ga iscjedio na novčanicu. Pa sam je zgužvao u lopticu i zavaljao šankom do šankera. Zaustavila se pred njim. Pogledao ju je. Polako sam ustao, izveo jedno razgobavanje vrata, okrenuo se pa izišao. Odlučio sam se vratiti u ured. Imao sam posla. Oči su mi bile plave i nitko me nije volio osim mene. Krenuo sam pjevušeći svoju omiljenu numeru iz “Carmen”.”
— Charles Bukowski
43. “Čitate Celinea?” upotao je ženski glas. Zvučio je seksi. U zadnje sam vrijeme bio nešto sam. I tako desetljećima.”
— Charles Bukowski
44. “We were in Jon’s car. “I have the first part I need. The pain-killer. You see I had to go to a doctor for an ingrown toenail. He operated. Then he gave me a pain-killer afterward. It worked great…”
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see. Anyhow, I had to go back to get the toe checked. I said to the doctor, ‘That pain-killer was great, it lasted ten hours. Tell me about it.’ He told me about it. Then I asked him, ‘Can I see it?’ And he took me to this medicine cabinet and pointed it out. ‘Very interesting,’ I said. We talked a bit more, then I left. But I had a bag with me, a small traveling bag. I left it by the medicine cabinet. Then I left the office, came back. ‘Oh,’ I told the receptionist, ‘I left my bag.’ I went to get the bag and there was nobody around. I opened the cabinet and took the pain-killer. You can’t do this,” I told Jon. I must, ” he answered.”
— Charles Bukowski
45. “As poet Charles Bukowski put it, “It’s not the big things that send us to the madhouse, not the loss of love, but the shoelace that breaks when there’s no time left.”
— Charles Bukowski
