30 Charles Bukowski Quotes to Make You Question Life
Charles Bukowski was a notorious poet, cult hero, and writer who did not shy away from the realities, grit, and emotion of everyday life.
His use of experience and direct language could be sour to some (possibly a turnoff/away), but to others - his attitude and blunt style are just what literary needed.
I first found his words intense, desperate, and broken in the book Ham on Rye.
The rawness and authenticity in his poetry drew me in, and I became an immediate fan. Over the years, I’ve developed a habit of writing down some of the quotes I come across.
Today, I want to share these quotes with you.
1. I had noticed that both in the very poor and very rich extremes of society the mad were often allowed to mingle freely.
2. The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose, they sliced a little more off you, until there was nothing left.
3. At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole goddamned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidate who reminded them most of themselves.
4. All a guy needed was a chance. Somebody was alway controlling who got a chance and who didn't.
5. Words weren’t dull, words were things that could make your mind hum. If you read them and let yourself feel the magic, you could live without pain, with hope, no matter what happened to you.
6. I had decided against religion a couple of years back. If it were true, it made fools out of people, or it drew fools. And if it weren’t true, the fools were all the more foolish.
7. You’ll never be a writer if you hide from reality.
8. It felt good to sit alone in a small space and smoke and drink. I had always been good company for myself.
9. People run from rain but sit in bathtubs full of water.
10. And yet women –– good women –– frightened me because they eventually wanted your soul, and what was left of mine, I wanted to keep.
11. What matters most is how well you walk through the fire.
12. How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, forced-fed, shit, piss, 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?
13. There is loneliness in this world so great that you can see it in the slow movement of a clock’s hand.
14. 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.
15. Cheer up. Maybe you’ll be famous after you’re dead.
16. There was no sense to life, to the structure of things. D. H. Lawrence had known that.
17. Dogs and angels are not very far apart.
18. When you drank the world was still out there, but for the moment it didn’t have you by the throat.
19. Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must live.
20. If you get married they think you’re finished and if you are without a woman they think you’re incomplete.
21. Forget my brother, I am my own keeper.
22. The emotion was there but it wasn't spelled out in neon.
23. All people start to come apart finally and there it is: just empty ashtrays in a room or wisps of hair on a comb in the dissolving moonlight.
24. In this land some of us fuck more than we die but most of us die better than we fuck.
25. And if you have the ability to love, love yourself first.
26. Human relationships were strange. I mean, you were with one person a while, eating and sleeping and living with them, loving them, talking to them, going places together, and then it stopped. Then there was a short period when you weren't with anybody, then another woman arrived, and you ate with her and fucked her, and it all seemed so normal, as if you had been waiting just for her and she had been waiting for you. I never felt right being alone; sometimes it felt good but it never felt right.
27. We drink our coffee and pretend not to look at each other.
28. 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.
29. You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.
30. Poetry is what happens when nothing else can.
Thanks for reading. I’m curious if you liked any of these quotes, what were your favorites, and what would you add?
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