Famous People Quotes

29 Thought-Provoking Charles Bukowski Quotes

Charles Bukowski Quotes

December 7th, 2017   |   Updated on July 12th, 2022

You may have heard of Charles Bukowski; if you have not, you have to read about him. He is one of America’s best contemporary writers of prose and poetry and also one of the most influential poets too. Here are some of his best sayings so you can grasp their meaning too.

 

Charles Bukowski Quotes Love

 

1. Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.  – Charles Bukowski

 

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

 

3. For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can’t readily accept the God formula, the big answers don’t remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.  – Charles Bukowski

 

4. 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

 

5. 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. It’s stupidity. Stupid people mingling with stupid people. Let them stupidify themselves. I’ve never been bothered with the need to rush out into the night. I hid in bars, because I didn’t want to hide in factories. That’s all. Sorry for all the millions, but I’ve never been lonely. I like myself. I’m the best form of entertainment I have. Let’s drink more wine!  – Charles Bukowski

 

6. What matters most is how well you walk through the fire  – Charles Bukowski

 

7. 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

 

8. If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery–isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you’ll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you’re going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It’s the only good fight there is.  – Charles Bukowski

 

9. My ambition is handicapped by laziness  – Charles Bukowski

 

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

 

Charles Bukowski Women Quotes

 

11. My dear, Find what you love and let it kill you. Let it drain you of your all. Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness. Let it kill you and let it devour your remains. For all things will kill you, both slowly and fastly, but it’s much better to be killed by a lover.~ Falsely yours   – Charles Bukowski

 

12. That’s the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.  – Charles Bukowski

 

13. I wanted the whole world or nothing.  – Charles Bukowski

 

14. There is a loneliness in this world so great that you can see it in the slow movement of the hands of a clock. People so tired mutilated either by love or no love. People just are not good to each other one on one. The rich are not good to the rich the poor are not good to the poor. We are afraid our educational system tells us that we can all be big-ass winners. It hasn’t told us about the gutters or the suicides. Or the terror of one person aching in one place alone untouched unspoken to watering a plant.  – Charles Bukowski

 

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

 

16. There are worse things than being alone but it often takes decades to realize this and most often when you do it’s too late and there’s nothing worse than too late  – Charles Bukowski

 

17. If you’re losing your soul and you know it, then you’ve still got a soul left to lose  – Charles Bukowski

 

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

 

19. Some lose all mind and become soul,insane. Some lose all soul and become mind, intellectual. Some lose both and become accepted  – Charles Bukowski

 

20. I loved you like a man loves a woman he never touches, only writes to, keeps little photographs of.  – Charles Bukowski

 

Best Bukowski Quotes

 

21. Being alone never felt right. sometimes it felt good, but it never felt right.  – Charles Bukowski

 

22. I will remember the kisses  our lips raw with love  and how you gave me  everything you had  and how I offered you what was left of  me,and I will remember your small room  the feel of you the light in the window, your records, your books ,our morning coffee ,our noons our nights, our bodies spilled together sleeping the tiny flowing currents immediate and forever your leg my leg your arm my arm your smile and the warmth of you who made me laugh again.  – Charles Bukowski

 

23. I felt like crying but nothing came out. it was just a sort of sad sickness, sick sad, when you can’t feel any worse. I think you know it. I think everybody knows it now and then. but I think I have known it pretty often, too often.  – Charles Bukowski

 

24. Boring damned people. All over the earth. Propagating more boring damned people. What a horror show. The earth swarmed with them.  – Charles Bukowski

 

25. 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

 

26. Those who escape hell however never talk about it and nothing much bothers them after that. – Charles Bukowski

 

27. A love like that was a serious illness, an illness from which you never entirely recover. – Charles Bukowski

 

28. Always be a poet, even in prose. – Charles Baudelaire

 

29. There’s a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I’m too tough for him,I say, stay in there, I’m not going to let anybody see you. – Charles Bukowski

 

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