My favourite quotes of Charles Bukowski, among the smartest and crudest writers of the 20th century, in my opinion. Without further ado, let’s read.
1 – The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.
Charles Bukowski
2 – How the hell could a person enjoy being awakened at 6:30AM, by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?
Charles Bukowski
3 – If you’re losing your soul and you know it, then you’ve still got a soul left to lose.
Charles Bukowski
4 – Watching the bull get the matador, that’s the best.
Charles Bukowski
5 – The free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it – basically because you feel good, very good, when you are near or with them.
Charles Bukowski
6 – An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.
Charles Bukowski
7 – If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even start. This could mean isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. If you’re going to try, go all the way. It’s the only good fight there is.
Charles Bukowski
8 – Find what you love and let it kill you.
Charles Bukowski
9 – This is very important – to take leisure time. Pace is the essence. Without stopping entirely and doing nothing at all for great periods, you’re gonna lose everything… just to do nothing at all, very, very important. And how many people do this in modern society? Very few. That’s why they’re all totally mad, frustrated, angry and hateful.
Charles Bukowski
10 – Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must live.
Charles Bukowski
People run from rain but sit in bathtubs full of water.
Charles Bukowski
Slavery was never abolished, it was only extended to include all the colors.
Charles Bukowski
In the morning it was morning and I was still alive.
Charles Bukowski
I think that everything should be made available to everybody. Nothing on earth available to any man should be confiscated and made unlawful by other men in more seemingly powerful and advantageous positions.
Charles Bukowski
Wherever the crowd goes, run in the other direction. They’re always wrong.
Charles Bukowski
I don’t like the clean-shaven boy with the necktie and the good job. I like desperate men, men with broken teeth and broken minds and broken ways. They interest me. They are full of surprises and explosions.
Charles Bukowski
If you’re feeling bad, you just look at the cats, you’ll feel better, because they know that everything is, just as it is.
Charles Bukowski
People with no morals often considered themselves more free, but mostly they lacked the ability to feel or love.
Charles Bukowski
I had noticed that both in the very poor and very rich extremes of society the mad were often allowed to mingle freely.
Charles Bukowski
Everything you own must be able to fit inside one suitcase; then your mind might be free.
Charles Bukowski
You’ve to die a few times before you actually live.
Charles Bukowski
Some lose all mind and become soul, insane. some lose all soul and become mind, intellectual. Some lose both and become accepted.
Charles Bukowski
Genius might be the ability to say a profound thing in a simple way.
Charles Bukowski
People are strange: they are constantly angered by trivial things, but on a major matter like totally wasting their lives, they hardly seem to notice.
Charles Bukowski
I guess the only time most people think about injustice is when it happens to them.
Charles Bukowski
If you lied to a man about his talent, that was the most unforgivable lie of them all, because that was telling him to go on, to continue which was the worst way for a man without real talent to waste his life, finally.
Charles Bukowski
There are only two things wrong with money: too much or too little.
Charles Bukowski
Nobody can save you but yourself and you’re worth saving. it’s a war not easily won but if anything is worth winning then this is it.
Charles Bukowski
Almost everybody is born a genius and buried an idiot.
Charles Bukowski
Only boring people get bored. They have to prod themselves continually in order to feel alive.
Charles Bukowski
There are times when those eyes inside your brain stare back at you.
Charles Bukowski
What is terrible is not death but the lives people live or don’t live up until their death.
Charles Bukowski
Do you hate people? I don’t hate them… I just feel better when they’re not around.
Charles Bukowski
Any damn fool can beg for some kind of job; it takes a wise man to make it without working.
Charles Bukowski
My ambition is handicapped by laziness.
Charles Bukowski
Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear.
Charles Bukowski
If you persisted long enough, the good luck usually came. Most people couldn’t wait on the luck, though, so they quit.
Charles Bukowski
You have to die a few times before you can really live.
Charles Bukowski
I have my madness, I live in another dimension and I do not have time for things that have no soul.
Charles Bukowski
Beauty is nothing, beauty won’t stay. You don’t know how lucky you are to be ugly, because if people like you, you know it’s for something else.
Charles Bukowski
Some people don’t like anybody who is famous. Some people don’t like anybody who isn’t.
Charles Bukowski
We drink our coffee and pretend not to look at each other.
Charles Bukowski
The nine-to-five is one of the greatest atrocities sprung upon mankind. You give your life away to a function that doesn’t interest you.
Charles Bukowski
I just want a hot cup of coffee, black, and I don’t want to hear about your troubles.
Charles Bukowski
And if you have the ability to love, love yourself first.
Charles Bukowski
