If you’re looking for some words of wisdom, look no further than Charles Bukowski. This prolific author and poet was known for his dark and cynical outlook on life, but also for his frank and honest observations. In these 165 quotes, you’ll get a glimpse into the mind of one of the most unique literary voices of our time. Whether you’re interested in writing, love, or just life in general, Bukowski has something to say that will resonate with you.
About Charles Bukowski
Charles Bukowski was born Heinrich Karl Bukowski in Andernach, Germany, on August 16th, 1920. He immigrated to the United States with his family when he was three years old and grew up in Los Angeles. Bukowski is considered one of the most important figures in American literature, as well as one of the most influential authors of the 20th century. His work has been translated into more than a dozen languages and his books are still widely read today.
Bukowski’s writing is characterized by its honest and straightforward approach to topics such as love, ***, drinking, gambling, and death. He often wrote about life on the fringes of society and his characters often faced difficult circumstances. Bukowski’s work has inspired many other authors, including Hunter S. Thompson and Jack Kerouac, as well as several films and documentaries.
Bukowski died in San Pedro, California at the age of 73 from leukemia. Despite his short life, he left behind a legacy that has inspired generations of readers. His words are a reminder that life is not to be taken for granted and that it should be enjoyed despite its hardships.
Whether you’re looking for perspective on love, writing, or just life in general, these 165 Charles Bukowski quotes are sure to resonate with you. Enjoy!
Charles Bukowski Quotes
- “It began as a mistake.” – Charles Bukowski
- “nobody ever finds the one” – Charles Bukowski
- “Love breaks my bones and I laugh” – Charles Bukowski
- “Without literature, life is ****.” – Charles Bukowski
- “Great art is horseshit, buy tacos.” – Charles Bukowski
- “The less I needed, the better I felt.” – Charles Bukowski
- “You have my soul and I have your money” – Charles Bukowski
- “Find what you love and let it **** you.” – Charles Bukowski
- “Eyes. Those **** eyes ****** me forever.” – Charles Bukowski
- “be it peace or happiness let it enfold you” – Charles Bukowski
- “Classes? Classes are for asses.” – Charles Bukowski, On Writing
- “The trouble with a mask is it never changes” – Charles Bukowski
- “the tigers have found me and I do not care.” – Charles Bukowski
- “Sometimes you just have to pee in the sink.” – Charles Bukowski
- “Poetry is what happens when nothing else can.” – Charles Bukowski
- “İnsanların çoğu dâhi doğar gerizekalı gömülür.” – Charles Bukowski
- “People empty me. I have to get away to refill.” – Charles Bukowski
- “*** is kicking death in the *** while singing.” – Charles Bukowski
- “We deserve nothing, and that’s all we have now.” – Charles Bukowski
- “My ambition is handicapped by laziness” – Charles Bukowski, Factotum
- “I wanted the whole world or nothing.” – Charles Bukowski, Post Office
- “Life’s as kind as you let it be.” – Charles Bukowski, Hot Water Music
- “The more crap you believe, the better off you are.” – Charles Bukowski
- “I am ashamed to say I am a member of the human race.” – Charles Bukowski
- “Any ******* can chase a skirt, art takes discipline.” – Charles Bukowski
- “we just held each other and I had never felt so good.” – Charles Bukowski
- “Are you becoming what you’ve always hated?” – Charles Bukowski, Hollywood
- “”she’ mad but she’ magic. there’ no lie in her fire.” – Charles Bukowski
- “If you have the ability to love, love yourself first.” – Charles Bukowski
- “We don’t even ask happiness, just a little less pain.” – Charles Bukowski
- “I don’t like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there” – Bukowski C.
- “what matters most is how well you walk through the fire” – Charles Bukowski
- “There is no other way, and there never was.” – Charles Bukowski, On Writing
- “i was born to hustle roses down the avenue of the dead.” – Charles Bukowski
- “She’s mad, but she’s magic. There’s no lie in her fire.” – Charles Bukowski
- “unless the sun inside you is burning your gut, don’t do it” – charles bukowski
- “The crazy ones only laugh when there is no reason to laugh.” – Charles Bukowski
- “My heart is a thousand years old. I am not like other people.” – Charles Bukowski
- “Goodness can be found sometimes in the middle of ****.” – Charles Bukowski, Women
- “The shortest distance between two points is often unbearable.” – Charles Bukowski
- “It’s so easy to be easy—if you let it.” – Charles Bukowski, Love Is a Dog from ****
- “Real loneliness is not necessarily limited to when you are alone.” – Charles Bukowski
- “Beware of those who seek constant crowds; they are nothing alone.” – Charles Bukowski
- “It’s a f*** you world. Well, keep it going anyhow, what the ****.” – Charles Bukowski
- “In the morning it was morning and I was still alive.” – Charles Bukowski, Post Office
- “Baby,” I said, “I’m a genius but nobody knows it but me.” – Charles Bukowski, Factotum
- “I hope that death contains less than this.” – Charles Bukowski, Love Is a Dog from ****
- “your life is your life don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.” – Charles Bukowski
- “Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.” – Charles Bukowski
- “Belane, are you nuts?” Who knows? Insanity is comparative. Who sets the norm?” – Bukowski
- “nothing can save you except writing. it keeps the walls from failing.” – Charles Bukowski
- “Na taip, galbūt aš ir nenormalus, bet džiaugiuosi, kad bent gyvas esu.” – Charles Bukowski
- “the history of melancholia includes all of us.” – Charles Bukowski, Love Is a Dog from ****
- “News travels fast in places where nothing much ever happens.” – Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye
- “New Year’s Eve always terrifies me.” – Charles Bukowski, Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame
- “purple does something strange to me” – Charles Bukowski, The People Look Like Flowers at Last
- “It wasn’t my day. My week. My month. My year. My life. God **** it.” – Charles Bukowski, Pulp
- “I pretend to understand because I don’t want anybody to be hurt” – Charles Bukowski, Hollywood
- “my beerdrunk soul is sadder than all the dead christmas trees of the world.” – Charles Bukowski
- “çünkü suçların en büyüğü, en acımasızı, yoksulun yoksulu soymasıdır kanımca,” – Charles Bukowski
- “It’s better to do a dull thing with style than a dangerous thing without it.” – Charles Bukowski
- “dogs and angels are not very far apart” – Charles Bukowski, The People Look Like Flowers at Last
- “when I am feeling low all i have to do is watch my cats and my courage returns” – Charles Bukowski
- “Of course it’s possible to love a human being if you don’t know them too well.” – Charles Bukowski
- “in this room the hours of love still make shadows.” – Charles Bukowski, The Pleasures of the Damned
- “I think I need a drink.’ ‘Almost everybody does only they don’t know it.” – Charles Bukowski, Women
- “I wasn’t much of a petty thief. I wanted the whole world or nothing.” – Charles Bukowski, Post Office
- “İnsan ırkını asla anlayamayacaktım, ama birilerinin şarlatanı oynaması gerekiyordu.” – Charles Bukowski
- “one can never be sure whether it’s good poetry or bad acid” – Charles Bukowski, Love Is a Dog from ****
- “each man’s **** is in a different place: mine is just up and behind my ruined face.” – Charles Bukowski
- “If you’re losing your soul and you know it, then you’ve still got a soul left to lose” – charles bukowski
- “being alone never felt right. sometimes it felt good, but it never felt right.” – Charles Bukowski, Women
- “I never felt right being alone; sometimes it felt good but it never felt right.” – Charles Bukowski, Women
- “That was all a man needed: hope. It was lack of hope that discouraged a man.” – Charles Bukowski, Factotum
- “they thought I had guts they were wrong I was only frightened of more important things” – Charles Bukowski
- “the tired sunsets and the tired people – it takes a lifetime to die and no time at all.” – Charles Bukowski
- “I never met another man I’d rather be. And even if that’s a delusion, it’s a lucky one.” – Charles Bukowski
- “My contest is only with myself, to do it right with power and force, delight and gamble.” – Charles Bukowski
- “Hace falta práctica, un poco de risa y algo de suerte…” – Charles Bukowski, Escritos de un viejo indecente
- “writers are desperate people and when they stop being desperate they stop being writers.” – Charles Bukowski
- “I’m going, she said. I love you but you’re crazy, you’re doomed.” – Charles Bukowski, Love Is a Dog from ****
- “stay with the beer. beer is continuous blood. a continuous lover.” – Charles Bukowski, Love Is a Dog from ****
- “those who escape **** however never talk about it and nothing much bothers them after that.” – Charles Bukowski
- “the place to find the center is at the edge” – Charles Bukowski, Run With The Hunted: A Charles Bukowski Reader
- “some moments are nice, some are nicer, some are even worth writing about.” – Charles Bukowski, War All the Time
- “I went to the worst of bars hoping to get killed but all I could do was to get drunk again.” – Charles Bukowski
- “It was like the beginning of life and laughter. It was the real meaning of the sun” – Charles Bukowski, Factotum
- “Do you hate people?” “I don’t hate them…I just feel better when they’re not around.” – Charles Bukowski, Barfly
- “You have to die a few times before you can really live.” – Charles Bukowski, The People Look Like Flowers at Last
- “I feel strangely normal.” – Charles Bukowski, The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship
- “I often stood in front of the mirror alone, wondering how ugly a person could get.” – Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye
- “An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.” – Charles Bukowski
- “they didn’t want to write they wanted to succeed at writing.” – Charles Bukowski, The Last Night of the Earth Poems
- “For each Joan of Arc there is a Hitler perched at the other end of the teeter-totter.” – Charles Bukowski, Factotum
- “We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.” – Charles Bukowski
- “I guess the only time most people think about injustice is when it happens to them.” – Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye
- “Our disappointment sits between us.” – Charles Bukowski, The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966
- “If there are junk yards in ****, love is the dog that guards the gates.” – Charles Bukowski, Love Is a Dog from ****
- “we know God is dead, they’ve told us, but listening to you I wasn’t sure.” – Charles Bukowski, Love Is a Dog from ****
- “love be damned now as love was damned when it first arrived.” – Charles Bukowski, The People Look Like Flowers at Last
- “What is your advice to young writers?” “Drink, **** and smoke plenty of cigarettes.” – Charles Bukowski, Hot Water Music
- “What a woman wants is a reaction. What a man wants is a woman.” – Charles Bukowski, The People Look Like Flowers at Last
- “Some people like what you do, some people hate what you do, but most people simply don’t give a ****.” – Charles Bukowski
- “Beware Those Who Are ALWAYS READING BOOKS” – Charles Bukowski, The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966
- “we had such tremendous fun and much agony together for some years” – Charles Bukowski, The People Look Like Flowers at Last
- “regret is mostly caused by not having done anything.” – Charles Bukowski, You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense
- “I thought you were sane,” I said, “but you’re just as crazy as the rest of them.” – Charles Bukowski, Love Is a Dog from ****
- “You begin saving the world by saving one person at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.” – Charles Bukowski
- “when the phone rings I too would like to hear words that might ease some of this.” – Charles Bukowski, Love Is a Dog from ****
- “if you get married they think you’re finished and if you are without a woman they think you’re incomplete.” – Charles Bukowski
- “I wasn’t lonely. I experienced no self-pity. I was just caught up in a life in which I could find no meaning.” – Charles Bukowski
- “Se empieza a salvar el mundo salvando a un hombre por vez; todo lo demás es romanticismo grandioso política”.” – Charles Bukowski
- “People who believe in politics are like people who believe in God: they are sucking wind through bent straws.” – Charles Bukowski
- “in this land some of us **** more than we die but most of us die better than we ****” – Charles Bukowski, Love Is a Dog from ****
- “You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.” – Charles Bukowski, Women
- “Finally there is nothing here for death to take away.” – Charles Bukowski, What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire
- “What a weary time those years were — to have the desire and the need to live but not the ability.” – Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye
- “I often carry things to read so that I will not have to look at the people.” – Charles Bukowski, The Last Night of the Earth Poems
- “people are not good to each other. perhaps if they were our deaths would not be so sad.” – Charles Bukowski, Love Is a Dog from ****
- “What foolishness makes us tweak the nose of Death continually?” – Charles Bukowski, You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense
- “I no longer had to prove that I was a man, I didn’t have to prove anything.” – Charles Bukowski, Betting on the Muse: Poems and Stories
- “I don’t remember going to bed, but in the morning, there I was.” – Charles Bukowski, You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense
- “I’ve had so many knives stuck into me, when they hand me a flower I can’t quite make out what it is. It takes time.” – Charles Bukowski
- “people run from rain but sit in bathtubs full of water.” – Charles Bukowski, The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966
- “jan was an excellent ****…she had a tight ***** and she took it like it was a knife that was killing her.” – Charles Bukowski, Factotum
- “People don’t need love. What they need is success in one form or another. It can be love but it needn’t be.” – Charles Bukowski, Factotum
- “so it’s always a process of letting go, one way or another” – Charles Bukowski, The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966
- “People with no morals often considered themselves more free, but mostly they lacked the ability to feel or love.” – Charles Bukowski, Women
- “We are here to **** war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.” – Charles Bukowski
- “When a hot woman meets a hermit one of them is going to change.” – Charles Bukowski, What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire
- “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
- “animals never worry about Heaven or ****. neither do I. maybe that’s why we get along” – Charles Bukowski, The Last Night of the Earth Poems
- “meidän täytyy tuoda omaa valoamme pimeyteen. kukaan ei tee sitä puolestamme.” – Charles Bukowski, Eläkeläinen Kaliforniasta: Runoja 1984‒1990
- “having nothing to struggle against they have nothing to struggle for.” – Charles Bukowski, You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense
- “I want so much that is not here and do not know where to go.” – Charles Bukowski, The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966
- “the worst thing,” he told me, “is bitterness, people end up so bitter.” – Charles Bukowski, You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense
- “The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.” – Charles Bukowski
- “some men never die and some men never live but we’re all alive tonight.” – Charles Bukowski, You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense
- “He asked, “What makes a man a writer?” “Well,” I said, “it’s simple. You either get it down on paper, or jump off a bridge.” – Charles Bukowski
- “I loved you like a man loves a woman he never touches, only writes to, keeps little photographs of.” – Charles Bukowski, Love Is a Dog from ****
- “There are times when those eyes inside your brain stare back at you.” – Charles Bukowski, What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire
- “I drive around the streets an inch away from weeping, ashamed of my sentimentality and possible love.” – Charles Bukowski, Love Is a Dog from ****
- “you boys can keep your virgins give me hot old women in high heels with asses that forgot to get old.” – Charles Bukowski, Love Is a Dog from ****
- “Some lose all mind and become soul,insane. some lose all soul and become mind, intellectual. some lose both and become accepted” – Charles Bukowski
- “A love like that was a serious illness, an illness from which you never entirely recover.” – Charles Bukowski, The People Look Like Flowers at Last
- “Ve son meteliğinle oynamıyorsan para değildir asıl mesele.” – Charles Bukowski, The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship
- “Boring damned people. All over the earth. Propagating more boring damned people. What a horror show. The earth swarmed with them.” – Charles Bukowski
- “there is always one woman to save you from another and as that woman saves you she makes ready to destroy” – Charles Bukowski, Love Is a Dog from ****
- “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, Ham on Rye
- “she was consumed by 3 simple things: drink, despair, loneliness; and 2 more: youth and beauty” – Charles Bukowski, The People Look Like Flowers at Last
- “Each person is only given so many evenings and each wasted evening is a gross violation against the natural course of your only life.” – Charles Bukowski
- “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.” – Charles Bukowski
- “Now something so sad has hold of us that the breath leaves and we can’t even cry.” – Charles Bukowski, You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense
- “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
- “And yet women-good women–frightened me because they eventually wanted your soul, and what was left of mine, I wanted to keep.” – Charles Bukowski, Women
- “I knew I was strong, and maybe like they said, “crazy.” But I had this feeling inside of me that something real was there.” – Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye
- “there is a loneliness in this world so great that you can see it in the slow movement of the hands of a clock” – Charles Bukowski, Love Is a Dog from ****
- “Morir en el suelo de la cocina a las siete de la mañana mientras otra gente hace huevos fritos no es tan grave salvo cuando te pasa a ti.” – Charles Bukowski
- “There are only two things wrong with money: too much or too little.” – Charles Bukowski, The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship
- “We are like roses that have never bothered to bloom when we should have bloomed and it is as if the sun has become disgusted with waiting” – Charles Bukowski
- “1Morir en el suelo de la cocina a las siete de la mañana mientras otra gente hace huevos fritos no es tan grave salvo cuando te pasa a ti.” – Charles Bukowski
- “Lighting new cigarettes, pouring more drinks. It has been a beautiful fight. Still is.” – Charles Bukowski, You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense
- “I wish to weep but sorrow is stupid. I wish to believe but belief is a graveyard.” – Charles Bukowski, What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire
- “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
- “I have one problem, I don’t hate people. They disgust me and I want to get away from them. I do not have hatred. I have an escape mechanism.” – Charles Bukowski
Wrapping Up
Charles Bukowski is one of the most iconic figures in modern literature. His work has inspired millions of readers around the world, and his words are filled with wisdom and insight. Whether it’s about love, money, or death, Bukowski had something to say about everything. He pushed boundaries with his writing and challenged traditional norms. It is no wonder why so many people still turn to his works decades after they were written. His words continue to resonate and bring comfort to those who read them. For this reason, Bukowski will remain an enduring figure in American literature for many years to come.
