"There's no way I can stop writing, it's a form of insanity."
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Quote collection
Charles Bukowski quotes (page 18 of 41)
813 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"It was sad, it was sad, it was sad. When Betty came back we didn't sing or laugh, or even argue. We sat drinking in the dark, smoking cigarettes, and when we went to sleep, I didn't put my feet on her body or she on mine like we used to. We slept without touching. We had both been robbed."
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"To be young is the only religion."
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"People do too much. They say too much."
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"When I was young I was depressed all the time. But suicide no longer seemed a possibility in my life. At my age there was very little left to kill. It was good to be old, no matter what they said. It was reasonable that a man had to be at least 50 years old before he could write with anything like clarity."
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"To do a dull thing with style-now that's what I call art."
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"What? You’d dare drink right after getting out of jail for intoxication?” That’s when you need a drink the most."
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"That was all a man needed: hope. It was lack of hope that discouraged a man."
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"hate contains truth. beauty is a facade."
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"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 . . ."
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"Bad luck for the young poet would be a rich father, an early marriage, an early success or the ability to do anything well."
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"Most people are much better at saying things in letters than in conversation, and some people can write artistic, inventive letters, but when they try a poem or story or novel they become pretentious."
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"alone with everybody the flesh covers the bone and they put a mind in there and sometimes a soul, and the women break vases against the walls and them men drink too much and nobody finds the one but they keep looking crawling in and out of beds. flesh covers the bone and the flesh searches for more than flesh. there's no chance at all: we are all trapped by a singular fate. nobody ever finds the one. the city dumps fill the junkyards fill the madhouses fill the hospitals fill the graveyards fill nothing else fills."
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"Trouble and pain were what kept a man alive. Or trying to avoid trouble and pain. It was a full time job."
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"I think that the world should be full of cats and full of rain, that's all, just cats and rain, rain and cats, very nice, good night."
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"My ambition is handicapped by laziness"
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"I still have a little whiskey left and therefore a chance."
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"I am for the small man who has not forgotten, for the man who loves his beer and his women and his sunlight"
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"If you let them kill you, they will"
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"Goodness can be found sometimes in the middle of hell."
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