Charles Bukowski Quotes

Find what you love and let it kill you. – Charles Bukowski

People empty me. I have to get away to refill. – Charles Bukowski

I don’t hate people. I just feel better when they aren’t around. – Charles Bukowski

To do a dangerous thing with style is what I call art. – Charles Bukowski

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. – Charles Bukowski

An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way. – Charles Bukowski

Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I’m not going to make it, but you laugh inside — remembering all the times you’ve felt that way. – Charles Bukowski

I think I need a drink, I said. Almost everybody does only they don’t know it. – Charles Bukowski

Bad taste creates many more millionaires than good taste. – Charles Bukowski

The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence. – Charles Bukowski

The more crazy you are, the more you must know. – 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. – Charles Bukowski

I’ve spent the better part of my life drunk. The rest I’ve just wasted. – Charles Bukowski

In the shadow of the moon, she danced in the sun. – Charles Bukowski

I wasn’t a misanthrope and I wasn’t a misogynist but I liked being alone. It felt good to sit alone in a small space and smoke and drink. I had always been good company for myself. – 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. – Charles Bukowski

I don’t hate anything. Not even people. – Charles Bukowski

Do you hate people? I don’t hate them…I just feel better when they’re not around. – Charles Bukowski

An artist is a dangerous thing to be. – Charles Bukowski

Style is the answer to everything. To do a dangerous thing with style is what I call art. – Charles Bukowski

You have to die a few times before you can really live. – Charles Bukowski

Find something you love and let it kill you. – Charles Bukowski

I wasn’t much for a petty thief or for skillful thievery. When I wanted something I just wanted it and I took it, often with my bare hands. – Charles Bukowski

I always felt that I had to write poems. I just felt the need to do it. – Charles Bukowski

I didn’t go to high school dances, and dating a girl meant getting stood up and walked home after football games. – Charles Bukowski

It is better to do nothing than to do something wrong. – Charles Bukowski

Sometimes you just have to pee in the sink. – Charles Bukowski

We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us. – Charles Bukowski

I don’t know about other people, but when I wake up in the morning and put my shoes on, I think, Jesus Christ, now what? – Charles Bukowski

There are so many things that piss me off. It wouldn’t be fair to pick just one. – Charles Bukowski

I am a selfish bastard. I can’t live alone, but I can’t live with anyone else. – Charles Bukowski

Personally, I’ve never known myself except as a loner, someone who’s incapable of camaraderie and things like that. – Charles Bukowski

I’ve never met another man I’d rather be. – Charles Bukowski

Even a sheet of paper has more patience than I do. – Charles Bukowski

As with all great writers, you forget that Bukowski is a writer as you read him. – Charles Bukowski

An artist is always alone – if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness. – Charles Bukowski

We have wasted History like a bunch of drunks shooting dice back in the men’s crapper of the local bar. – Charles Bukowski

Society is a fraud so complete and venal that it demands to be destroyed beyond the power of memory to recall its existence. – Charles Bukowski

I had nothing to offer anyone, except my own confusion. – Charles Bukowski

Some people never go crazy, What truly horrible lives they must live. – Charles Bukowski

We’re all alone and we’ll die alone. There’s no heroism in dying. – Charles Bukowski

I don’t know why I fell in love with you… but I did and if there are lies involved it doesn’t matter anymore because my heart is filled with you, not with lies. – Charles Bukowski

My ambition is handicapped by laziness – 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. – Charles Bukowski

your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle. – Charles Bukowski