51 Popular Charles Bukowski Quotes

When love becomes a command, Hatred can become a pleasure.Notes of a Dirty Old Man (City Lights Books, ed. 1973), Page 206

Love is a form of prejudice. You love what you need, you love what makes you feel good, you love what is convenient. How can you say you love one person when there are ten thousand people in the world that you would love more if you ever met them? But you’ll never meet them.Hot Water Music (Black Sparrow Press, ed. 1983), Strokes to Nowhere, Page 67

Beautiful thoughts, and beautiful women never last.Notes of a Dirty Old Man (City Lights Books, ed. 1973), Page 206

If you get married they think you’re finished and if you are without a woman they think you’re incomplete.You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense (Black Sparrow Press, ed. 1986), For the Concerned, Page 123

Many a good man has been put under the bridge by a woman.Women (HarperCollins, ed. 1978), Dedication

If you want to know who your friends are, get yourself a jail sentence.Notes of a Dirty Old Man (City Lights Books, ed. 1973), Page 208

Some men never die and some men never live but we’re all alive tonight.You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense (Black Sparrow Press, ed. 1986), 1813-1883, Page 13

Too often the people complain that they have done nothing with their lives and then they wait for somebody to tell them that this isn’t so.What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire (HarperCollins, ed. 1999), Wasted, Page 372

People with no morals often considered themselves more free, but mostly they lacked the ability to feel or to love.Women (HarperCollins, ed. 1978), Chapter 96, Page 250

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.The Last Night of the Earth Poems (HarperCollins, ed. 1992), Wandering in the Cage, Page 167

What is terrible is not death but the lives people live or don’t live up until their death.The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors have taken over the Ship (Black Sparrow Press, ed. 1998), September 12, 1991, Page 13

To be young is the only religion.Notes of a Dirty Old Man (City Lights Books, ed. 1973), Page 59

Some men hope for revolution but when you revolt and set up your new government you find your new government is still the same old Papa, he has only put on a cardboard mask.Notes of a Dirty Old Man (City Lights Books, ed. 1973), Page 76

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.The Most Beautiful Woman in Town & Other Stories (City Lights Books, ed. 1983), Politics Is Like Trying To Screw A Cat In The Ass, Page 176

Slavery was never abolished, it was only extended to include all the colors.Reach for the Sun: Selected Letters 1978-1994, Volume 3 ((Black Sparrow Press, ed. 1999); Letter to John Martin (August 12, 1986), Page 83

You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.Tales of Ordinary Madness (City Lights Books, ed. 1983), Too Sensitive, Page 101

When you drank the world was still out there, but for the moment it didn’t have you by the throat.Factotum (Black Sparrow Press, ed. 1975), Chapter 31, Page 67

They experimented on the poor and if that worked they used the treatment on the rich. And if it didn’t work, there would still be more poor left over to experiment upon.Ham on Rye (HarperCollins, ed. 1982), Chapter 31, Page 136

A coward is a man who can foresee the future. A brave man is almost always without imagination.Tales of Ordinary Madness (City Lights Books, ed. 1983), A Quiet Conversation Piece, Page 138

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.Notes of a Dirty Old Man (City Lights Books, ed. 1973), Page 207

Almost everybody is born a genius and buried an idiot.Notes of a Dirty Old Man (City Lights Books, ed. 1973), Page 207

Poetry is what happens when nothing else can.The Flash of Lightning Behind the Mountain (HarperCollins, ed. 2004), Writing, Page 226

Bad taste creates many more millionaires than good taste.Hollywood (Black Sparrow Press, ed. 1989), Chapter 17, Page 92

No pain means the end of feeling; each of our joys is a bargain with the devil.Notes of a Dirty Old Man (City Lights Books, ed. 1973), Page 207

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.The Night Torn Mad With Footsteps (2001), Gamblers all

The difference between Art and Life is that Art is more bearable.Notes of a Dirty Old Man (City Lights Books, ed. 1973), Page 207

Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame (Black Sparrow Press, ed. 1974), Some People, Page 190

You have to die a few times before you can really live.The People Look Like Flowers at Last (HarperCollins, ed. 2007), Breakfast, Page 58

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.The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors have taken over the Ship (Black Sparrow Press, ed. 1998), August 29, 1991, Page 10

Life’s as kind as you let it be.Hot Water Music (Black Sparrow Press, ed. 1983), A Favor for Don, Page 193

If you don’t have much soul left and you know it, you still got soul.Tales of Ordinary Madness (City Lights Books, ed. 1983), A Dollar And Twenty Cents, Page 124

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.Tales of Ordinary Madness (City Lights Books, ed. 1983), A Bad Trip, Page 201

Some lose all mind and become soul: insane. Some lose all soul and become mind: intellectual. Some lose both and become: accepted.What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire (HarperCollins, ed. 1999), Lifedance, Page 90

The history of melancholia includes all of us.Love is a Dog from Hell (Black Sparrow Press, ed. 1977), Melancholia, Page 193

But my whole life has been a matter of fighting for one simple hour to do what I want to do. There was always something getting in the way of my getting to myself.The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors have taken over the Ship (Black Sparrow Press, ed. 1998), September 11, 1991, Page 11

Things get bad for all of us, almost continually, and what we do under the constant stress reveals who/what we are.What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire (HarperCollins, ed. 1999), Blue Head of Death, Page 164

There are times when those eyes inside your brain stare back at you.What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire (HarperCollins, ed. 1999), What do they want?, Page 350

If you don’t gamble, you’ll never win.Notes of a Dirty Old Man (City Lights Books, ed. 1973), Page 206

Anybody can be a non-drunk. It takes a special talent to be a drunk. It takes endurance.The Movie: Barfly (Black Sparrow Press, ed. 1987), Page 96

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.Women (HarperCollins, ed. 1978), Chapter 76, Page 171

Drinking is another way of thinking, another way of living. It gives you two lives instead of one.Reach for the Sun: Selected Letters 1978-1994, Volume 3 (Black Sparrow Press, ed. 1999); Letter to John Martin (August 12, 1986), Page 83

Drinking is an emotional thing. It joggles you out of the standardism of everyday life, out of everything being the same. It yanks you out of your body and your mind and throws you against the wall. I have the feeling that drinking is a form of suicide where you’re allowed to return to life and begin all over the next day. It’s like killing yourself, and then you’re reborn. I guess I’ve lived about ten or fifteen thousand lives now.Paying for Horses: An Interview with Charles Bukowski by Robert Wennersten, London Magazin (December 1974-Janurary 1975)

It was true that I didn’t have much ambition, but there ought to be a place for people without ambition, I mean a better place than the one usually reserved. How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, s***, p***, 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?Factotum (Black Sparrow Press, ed. 1975), Chapter 55, Page 12

My ambition is handicapped by laziness.Factotum (Black Sparrow Press, ed. 1975), Chapter 45, Page 106

Real loneliness is not necessarily limited to when you are alone.Sifting Through the Madness for the Word, the Line, the Way (HarperCollins, ed. 2003), Part 4, Page 309

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.War All the Time (Black Sparrow Press, ed. 1984), Oh, yes, Page 100

I never felt right being alone; sometimes it felt good but it never felt right.Women (HarperCollins, ed. 1978), Chapter 37, Page 101

Goodness could be found sometimes in the middle of hell.Women (HarperCollins, ed. 1978), Chapter 22, Page 69

Humanity, you never had it from the beginning.Women (HarperCollins, ed. 1978), Chapter 91, Page 223

If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even start. If you’re going to try, go all the way. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives, jobs and maybe your mind. Go all the way. It could mean not eating for 3 or 4 days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail, it could mean derision, 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. Do it, do it, do it. Do it. All the way. All the way. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter, It’s the only good fight there is.What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire (HarperCollins, ed. 1999), Roll the Dice, Page 408

What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire.What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire (HarperCollins, ed. 1999)

Find what you love and let it kill you.Original 'Find what you like, and let it kill you' by Kinky Friedman, Houston Chronicle (1986), Page 1 (More info)