"Love came hard and very seldom. When it did it was usually for the wrong reasons."
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Quote collection
Charles Bukowski quotes (page 12 of 41)
813 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"There is something about writing poetry that brings a man close to the cliff's edge."
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"If there are junk yards in hell, love is the dog that guards the gates."
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"I was glad I wasn't in love, that I wasn't happy with the world. I like being at odds with everything. People in love often become edgy, dangerous. They lose their sense of perspective. They lose their sense of humor. They become nervous, psychotic bores. They even become killers."
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"Love is a horse with a broken leg trying to stand while 45,000 people watch."
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"People in love often become edgy, dangerous. They lose their sense of perspective."
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"All our days are marked with/ unexpected/ affronts--some/ disastrous, others/ less so/ but the process is/ wearing and/ continuous./ Attrition rules./ Most give/ way/ leaving/ empty spaces/ where people should/ be."
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"Death is nothing, brother, it's life that's hard"
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"Invent yourself and then reinvent yourself."
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"I don't remember going to bed, but in the morning, there I was."
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"I like women who haven’t lived with too many men. I don’t expect virginity but I simply prefer women who haven’t been rubbed raw by experience. There is a quality about women who choose men sparingly; it appears in their walk in their eyes in their laughter and in their gentle hearts. Women who have had too many men seem to choose the next one out of revenge rather than with feeling. When you play the field selfishly everything works against you: one can’t insist on love or demand affection. You’re finally left with whatever you have been willing to give which often is: nothing."
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"Things get bad for all of us, almost continually, and what we do under the constant stress reveals who/what we are."
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"I just want a hot cup of coffee,black,and I don’t want to hear about your troubles."
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"There's nothing to stop a man from writing unless that man stops himself. If a man truly desires to write, then he will. Rejection and ridicule will only strengthen him. And the longer he is held back the stronger he will become, like a mass of rising water against a dam. There is no losing in writing, it will make your toes laugh as you sleep, it will make you stride like a tiger, it will fire the eye and put you face to face with death. You will die a fighter, you will be honored in hell. The luck of the word. Go with it, send it."
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"If I bet on humanity, I'd never cash a ticket."
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"Thanksgiving. It proved you had survived another year with its wars, inflation, unemployment, smog, presidents. It was a grand neurotic gathering of clans: loud drunks, grandmothers, sisters, aunts, screaming children, would-be suicides. And don't forget indigestion. I wasn't different from anyone else: There sat the 18-pound bird on my sink, dead, plucked, totally disemboweled. Iris would roast it for me."
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"Most people's deaths are a sham. There's nothing left to die."
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"I wish to weep but sorrow is stupid. I wish to believe but belief is a graveyard."
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"stay with the beer. beer is continuous blood. a continuous lover."
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"Boring damned people. All over the earth. Propagating more boring damned people. What a horror show. The earth swarmed with them."
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