Charles Bukowski

“purple does something strange to me”

“in that drunken placeyou wouldlike to hand your heart to herand saytouch itbut thengive it back.”

“whiskey makes the heart beat fasterbut it sure doesn't help themind and isn't it funny how you can ache justfrom the deadly drone ofexistence?”

“startling! such determination in the dull and uninspiredand the copyists.they never lose the fierce gratitudefor their uneventfulness,nor do they forget to laughat the wit of slugs;as a study in diluted sensesthey'd make any pharaohcough up his beans;in music they prefer the monotony ofdripping faucets;in love and sex they prefer each otherand therefore compound theproblem;the energy with which they propel theiruselessness(without any self-doubt)toward worthless goalsis as magnificent ascow shit.they produce novels, children, death,freeways, cities, wars, wealth, poverty, politiciansand total areas of grandiose waste;it's as if the whole world is wrapped in dirtybandages.it's best to take walks late at night.it's best to do your business only onMondays andTuesdays.it's best to sit in a small roomwith the shades downandwait.the strongest men are the fewestand the strongest women die alonetoo.”

“I once lay in awhite hospitalfor the dying and the dyingself, where some god pissed a rain ofreason to make things growonly to die, where on my kneesI prayed for LIGHT,I prayed for l*i*g*h*t,and prayingcrawled like a blind slug into thewebwhere threads of wind stuck against my mindand I died of pityfor Man, for myself,on a cross without nails,watching in fear asthe pig belches in his sty, farts,blinks and eats.”

“we only asked for leopards to guardour thinning dreams.”

“the psyche has been burnedand left us senseless,the world has been darker than lights-outin a closet full of hungry bats,and the whiskey and wine entered our veinswhen blood was too weak to carry on”

“I suppose like othersI have come through fire and sword,love gone wrong,head-on crashes, drunk at sea,and I have listened to the simple sound of water runningin tubsand wished to drown”

“to fight for each minute is to fight for what is possible withinyourself,so that your life and your deathwill not be liketheirs.”

“I remember wheneach 4th lot was vacant and overgrown, and the landlordonly go this rentwhen you hadit, and each day was clear and good and each moment wasfull of promise.”

“dogs and angels are notvery far apart”

“there is moss on the wallsand the stain of thought and failure andwaiting”

“Pain is strange. A cat killing a bird, a car accident, a fire.... Pain arrives, BANG, and there it is, it sits on you. It's real. And to anybody watching, you look foolish. Like you've suddenly become an idiot. There's no cure for it unless you know somebody who understands how you feel, and knows how to help.”

“La mayoría de la muerte de la gente es una farsa, no queda en ellos nada que pueda morir”

“When you clean up a city, you destroy it.”

“Great art is horseshit, buy tacos.”

“Don't try.”

“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.”

“Life's as kind as you let it be.”

“And it seems people should not build houses anymoreit seems people should stop working and sit in small rooms on second floorsunder electric lightswithout shades;it seems there is a lot to forgetand a lot not to doand in drugstores, markets, bars,the people are tired, they do not want to move, and I stand there at nightand look through this house and the house does not want to be built”

“I couldn't get myself to read the want ads. The thought of sitting in front of a man behind a desk and telling him that I wanted a job, that I was qualified for a job, was too much for me. Frankly, I was horrified by life, at what a man had to do simply in order to eat, sleep, and keep himself clothed. So I stayed in bed and drank. When you drank the world was still out there, but for the moment it didn't have you by the throat.”

“You have my soul and I have your money”

“If you're losing your soul and you know it, then you've still got a soul left to lose”

“I was young I was so young it hurt like a knifeinsidebecause there was no alternative except to hide as longas possible---not in self-pity but with dismay at my limited chance:trying to connect.”

“if you get married they think you'refinishedand if you are without a woman they think you'reincomplete.”

“each man's hell is in a different place: mine is just up and behindmy ruined face.”

“I was their bar freak, they needed meto make themselves feelbetter.just like, at times, I needed thatgraveyard.”

“it seemed to me that I had never metanother person on earthas discouraging to my happinessas my father.and it appeared that I hadthe same effect uponhim.”

“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, 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?”

“Нервов у меня много, а вот железных нет.”

“there's a bluebird in my heart thatwants to get outbut I'm too clever, I only let him outat night sometimeswhen everybody's asleep.I say, I know that you're there,so don't besad.then I put him back,but he's singing a littlein there, I haven't quite let himdieand we sleep together likethatwith oursecret pactand it's nice enough tomake a manweep, but I don'tweep, doyou?”

“I went to the worst of bars hoping to get killed but all I could do was to get drunk again.”

“as the spirit wanes the form appears”

“there is always one woman to save you from another and as that woman saves you she makes ready to destroy”

“there is a loneliness in this world so great that you can see it in the slow movement of the hands of a clock”

“for a man of 55 who didn't get laid until he was 23 and not very often until he was 50 I think that I should stay listed via Pacific Telephone until I get as much as the average man has had”

“in this land some of us fuck more than we die but most of us die better than we fuck”

“if you think they didn't go crazy in tiny rooms just like you're doing now without women without food without hope then you're not ready. ”

“I loved you like a man loves a woman he never touches, only writes to, keeps little photographs of.”

“you boys can keep your virgins give me hot old women in high heels with asses that forgot to get old.”

“A man who can beat the horses can do anything he makes up his mind to do. ”

“Dying should come easy:like a freight train youdon't hear whenyour back isturned.”

“What a weary time those years were -- to have the desire and the need to live but not the ability.”

“you son of a bitch, she said, I amtrying to build a meaningfulrelationship.you can't build it with a hammer,he said.”

“what matters most is how well you walk through the fire”

“there are worse thingsthan being alonebut it often takesdecades to realize thisand most often when you doit's too lateand there's nothing worsethan too late”

“i g l o o his name was Eddie and he had abig white dogwith a curly taila huskielike one of those that pulled sleighsup near the north poleIgloo he called himand Eddie had a bow and arrowand every week or twohe'd send an arrowinto the dog's sidethen run into his mother's housethrough the yelpingsaying that Igloo had fallen onthe arrow.that dog took quite a few arrows andmanaged tosurvivebut I saw what really happened and didn'tlike Eddie very much.so when I broke Eddie's legin a sandlot football gamethat was my way of getting evenfor Igloo.his parents threatened to sue myparentsclaiming I did it on purpose becausethat's what Eddietold them.well, nobody had any money anyhowand when Eddie's father got a jobin San Diegothey moved away and left thedog.we took him in.Igloo turned out to be rather dumbdid not respond to very muchhad no life or joy in himjust stuck out his tonguepantedslept most of the timewhen he wasn't eatingand although he wiped his assup and down the lawn afterdefecatinghe usually had a large fragrant smear ofbrownunder his tailwhen he was run over by anicecream truck3 or 4 months laterand died in a stream of scarletI didn't feel more than theusual amount of griefand lossand I was still glad that Ihad managed tobreak Eddie's leg.”

“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.”

“Sometimes you just have to pee in the sink.”

“Poetry is what happens when nothing else can.”