Charles Bukowski

“this time has finished me.”

“the history of melancholia includes all of us.”

“sometimes I hate you," she said.”

“I only want sweet peace and kindliness when I awaken -- but there's always some finger pointing, telling me some terrible deed I committed during the night. It seems I make a lot of mistakes and it seems that I am not allowed any.”

“In the old days, before I was married, or knew a lot of women, I would just pull down all the shades and go to bed for three or four days. I'd get up to shit. I'd eat a can of beans, go back to bed, just stay there for three or four days. Then I'd put on my clothes and I'd walk outside, and the sunlight was brilliant, and the sounds were great. I felt powerful, like a recharged battery. But you know the first bring-down? The first human face I saw on the sidewalk, I lost half my charge right there.”

“I see men assassinated around me every day. I walk through rooms of the dead, streets of the dead, cities of the dead; men without eyes, men without voices; men with manufactured feelings and standard reactions; men with newspaper brains, television souls and high school ideas. Kennedy himself was 9/10ths the way around the clock or he wouldn't have accepted such an enervating and enfeebling job -- meaning President of the United States of America. How can I be concerned with the murder of one man when almost all men, plus females, are taken from cribs as babies and almost immediately thrown into the masher?”

“Love is all right for those who can handle the psychic overload. It's like trying to carry a full garbage can on your back over a rushing river of piss.”

“Ihave a face like a washrag. I singlove songs and carry steel.I would rather die than cry. I can'tstand hounds can't live without them.I hang my head against the whiterefrigerator and want to scream likethe last weeping of life forever butI am bigger than the mountains.”

“I hope that death containsless than this.”

“and you invented meand I invented youand that's why we don'tget alongon this bedany longer.you were the world'sgreatest inventionuntil youflushed meaway.now it's your turnto wait for the touchof the handle.somebody will do itto you,bitch,and if they don'tyou will - mixed with your owngreen or yellow or whiteor blueor lavendergoodbye.”

“the masses are everywherethey know how to do things:they have sane and deadly angersfor sane and deadlythings.”

“soon I'll finish this 5th ofPuerto Rican rum.in the morning I'll vomit andshower, drive backin, have a sandwich by 1 p.m.,be back in my room by2,stretched on the bed,waiting for the phone to ring,not answering,my holiday is anevasion, mt reasoningis not.”

“but right nowit's Bob DylanBob Dylan BobDylan all theway.”

“she is no longerthe beautiful womanshe was. she sendsphotos of herselfsitting upon a rockby the oceanalone and damned.I could have hadher once. I wonderif she thinks Icould havesaved her?”

“there's no chanceat all:we are all trappedby a singularfate.”

“I was only kidding about the hundred," she says.oh," I say, "what will it cost me?"she lights her cigarette withmy lighter and looks at methrough the flame:her eyes tell me.look," I say, "I don't think Ican ever pay that price again.”

“stay with the beer.beer is continuous blood.a continuous lover.”

“What will you do?""Oh, hell, I'll write a novel about writing the screenplay and making the movie.""What are you going to call it?""Hollywood.""Hollywood?""Yes...”

“Each person is only given so many evenings and each wasted evening is a gross violation against the natural course of your only life.”

“it doesn't matter if Prince Charles falls off his horseor that the hummingbird is so seldomseenor that we are too senseless to goinsane.coffee. give us more of that NOTHINGcoffee.”

“my greatest problem was stamps, envelopes, paper and wine, with the world on the edge of World War II.”

“I was naturally a loner, content just to live with a woman, eat with her, sleep with her, walk down the street with her. I didn't want conversation, or to go anywhere except the racetrack or the boxing matches. I didn't understand t.v. I felt foolish paying money to go into a movie theatre and sit with other people to share their emotions. Parties sickened me. I hated the game-playing, the dirty play, the flirting, the amateur drunks, the bores.”

“poetry readings have to be some of the saddestdamned things ever,the gathering of the clansmen and clanladies,week after week, month after month, yearafter year,getting old together,reading on to tiny gatherings,still hoping their genius will bediscovered,making tapes together, discs together,sweating for applausethey read basically to and foreach other,they can't find a New York publisheror onewithin miles,but they read on and onin the poetry holes of America,never daunted,never considering the possibility thattheir talent might bethin, almost invisible,they read on and onbefore their mothers, their sisters, their husbands,their wives, their friends, the other poetsand the handful of idiots who have wanderedinfrom nowhere. I am ashamed for them,I am ashamed that they have to bolster each other,I am ashamed for their lisping egos,their lack of guts. if these are our creators,please, please give me something else: a drunken plumber at a bowling alley,a prelim boy in a four rounder,a jock guiding his horse through along therail,a bartender on last call,a waitress pouring me a coffee,a drunk sleeping in a deserted doorway,a dog munching a dry bone,an elephant's fart in a circus tent,a 6 p.m. freeway crush,the mailman telling a dirty joke anythinganythingbut these.”

“Gradually I came to realize that my understanding of women goes only as far as the pleasure is concerned.”

“mercy, I think, doesn't the human race know anything about mercy?”

“I thought you were sane," I said, "but you'rejust as crazy as the rest of them.”

“I'm going, she said. I love you but you'recrazy, you're doomed.”

“your letters got sadder. your lovers betrayed you. kid, I wrote back, all lovers betray. it didn't help. you said you had a crying bench and it was by a bridge and the bridge was over the river and you sat on the crying bench every night and wept for the lovers who had hurt and forgotten you.”

“we know God is dead, they've told us, but listening to you I wasn't sure.”

“Yes Yeswhen God created love he didn't help most when God created dogs He didn't help dogs when God created plants that was average when God created hate we had a standard utility when God created me He created me when God created the monkey He was asleep when He created the giraffe He was drunk when He created narcotics He was high and when He created suicide He was low when He created you lying in bed He knew what He was doing He was drunk and He was high and He created the mountains and the sea and fire at the same time He made some mistakes but when He created you lying in bed He came all over His Blessed Universe.”

“nothing can save you except writing. it keeps the walls from failing.”

“and our few good times will be rare because we have the critical senseand are not easy to fool with laughter”

“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?”

“It began as a mistake.”

“I carry death in my left pocket. Sometimes I take it out and talk to it: "Hello, baby, how you doing? When you coming for me? I'll be ready.”

“they pulled Ezra through the streets in a wooden cage. Blake was sure of God. Villon was a mugger. Lorca sucked cock. T. S. Eliot worked a teller's cage”

“Writing is something that you don't know how to do. You sit down and it's something that happens, or it may not happen. So, how can you teach anybody how to write? It's beyond me, because you yourself don't even know if you're going to be able to. I'm always worried, well, you know, every time I go upstairs with my wine bottle. Sometimes I'll sit at that typewriter for fifteen minutes, you know. I don't go up there to write. The typewriter's up there. If it doesn't start moving, I say, well this could be the night that I hit the dust.”

“unless it comes out ofyour soul like a rocket,unless being still woulddrive you to madness orsuicide or murder,don't do it.unless the sun inside you isburning your gut,don't do it.when it is truly time,and if you have been chosen,it will do it byitself and it will keep on doing ituntil you die or it dies in you.there is no other way.and there never was.”

“when the phone ringsI too would like to hear wordsthat might easesome of this.”

“Whores are natural”

“great writers are indecent peoplethey live unfairlysaving the best part for paper.good human beings save the worldso that bastards like me can keep creating art,become immortal.if you read this after I am deadit means I made it.”

“it is good to be sitting some placein public at 2:30 in the afternoonwithout getting the flesh ripped fromyour bones.”

“It was wintertime. I was starving to death trying to be a writer in New York. I hadn't eaten for three or four days. So, I finally said, "I'm gonna have a big bag of popcorn." And God, I hadn't tasted food for so long, it was so good. Each kernel, you know, each one was like a steak! I chewed and it would just drop into my poor stomach. My stomach would say, "THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!" I was in heaven, just walking along, and two guys happened by, and one said to the other, "Jesus Christ!" The other one said, "What was it?" "Did you see that guy eating popcorn? God, it was awful!" And so I couldn't enjoy the rest of the popcorn. I thought; what do you mean, "it was awful?" I'm in heaven here. I guess I was kinda dirty. They can always tell a fucked-up guy.”

“That's the way it ends. The thin edge of the wedge.”

“She was desperate and she was choosey at the same time and, in a way, beautiful, but she didn't have quite enough going for her to become what she imagined herself to be.”

“There were always men looking for jobs in America. There were always all these usable bodies. And I wanted to be a writer. Almost everybody was a writer. Not everybody thought they could be a dentist or an automobile mechanic but everybody knew they could be a writer. Of those fifty guys in the room, probably fifteen of them thought they were writers. Almost everybody used words and could write them down, i.e., almost everybody could be a writer. But most men, fortunately, aren't writers, or even cab drivers, and some men--many men--unfortunately aren't anything.”

“Nothing is worse than to finish a good shit, then reach over and find the toilet paper container empty. Even the most horrible human being on earth deserves to wipe his ass.”

“For each Joan of Arc there is a Hitler perched at the other end of the teeter-totter.”

“How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 8:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, 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? ”

“The apartment was built at the edge of a high cliff so that when you looked out the back window it seemed as if you were twelve floors up instead of four. It was very much like living on the edge of the world - a last resting place before the final big drop.”