Charles Bukowski quotes

Charles Bukowski was a German-American poet, novelist, and short story writer known for his raw, gritty depiction of urban life. His work often explored themes of alcohol, relationships, and the struggles of the working class. He became a cult literary figure for his candid voice and unfiltered storytelling. Here are 564 of his quotes:

Some people never go crazy, What truly horrible lives they must live. (Charles Bukowski)
writers are desperate people and when they stop being desperate they stop being writers. View quote
Charles Bukowski
An intellectual is a man who says a simple thing in a difficult way; an artist is a man who says a difficult thing in a simple way. View quote
Charles Bukowski
The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don't have to waste your time voting. View quote
Charles Bukowski
Almost everybody is born a genius and buried an idiot. View quote
Charles Bukowski
You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics. View quote
Charles Bukowski
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. View quote
Charles Bukowski
Of course it's possible to love a human being if you don't know them too well. View quote
Charles Bukowski
People with no morals often considered themselves more free, but mostly they lacked the ability to feel or love. View quote
Charles Bukowski
Bad taste creates many more millionaires than good taste. View quote
Charles Bukowski
If you want to know who your friends are, get yourself a jail sentence. (Charles Bukowski)
People don't need love. What they need is success in one form or another. It can be love but it needn't be. View quote
Charles Bukowski
I walk through rooms of the dead, streets of the dead, cities of the dead: men without eyes, men without voices; men with manufactured feelings and standard reactions; men with newspaper brains, television souls and high school ideals. View quote
Charles Bukowski
Show me a man who lives alone and has a perpetually clean kitchen, and eight times out of nine I'll show you a man with detestable spiritual qualities. View quote
Charles Bukowski
We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing. View quote
Charles Bukowski
If you're losing your soul and you know it, then you've still got a soul left to lose. View quote
Charles Bukowski
I think I need a drink.' 'Almost everybody does only they don't know it. View quote
Charles Bukowski
I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there. View quote
Charles Bukowski
To do a dull thing with style-now that's what I call art. View quote
Charles Bukowski
"Fay had a spot of blood on the left side of her mouth and I took a wet cloth and wiped it off. Women were meant to suffer; no wonder they asked for constant declarations of love.”. View quote
Charles Bukowski
There will always be something to ruin our lives, it all depends on what or which finds us first. We are always ripe and ready to be taken. (Charles Bukowski)
It's 4:30 in the morning, it's always 4:30 in the morning. View quote
Charles Bukowski
LSD, yeah, the big parade – everybody's doin' it now. Take LSD, then you are a poet, an intellectual. What a sick mob. I am building a machine gun in my closet now to take out as many of them as I can before they get me. View quote
Charles Bukowski
Understand me. I'm not like an ordinary world. I have my madness, I live in another dimension and I do not have time for things that have no soul. View quote
Charles Bukowski
what matters most is how well you walk through the fire. View quote
Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski - Image
Photo: Bukowski-by-origa.jpg: Origafoundation derivative work: --MGuf (d), CC BY-SA 3.0
Occupation: American Author
Born: August 16, 1920
Died: March 9, 1994
Quotes count: 564
Wikipedia: Charles Bukowski

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