Charles Bukowski

“(Non è divertente?)Quando eravamo ragazzi distesi sull’erba a pancia in giù parlavamo spesso di come ci sarebbe piaciuto morire. Ed eravamo tutti d’accordo su una cosa: ci sarebbe piaciuto morir scopando(E nessuno di noi aveva mai scopato fino allora). Ora che non siamo più bambini pensiamo di più a come non morire. E anche se siamo pronti molti di noi preferirebbero farlo da soli sotto le lenzuola. Ora che la maggior parte di noi ha fottuto via la propria vita.”

“I would be married, but I'd have no wife, I would be married to a single life.”

“I just want a hot cup of coffee,black,and I don’t want to hear about your troubles.”

“Humanity, you never had it from the beginning." That was my motto.”

“t was almost disappointing because it seemed when stress and madness were eliminated from my daily life there wasn't much left you could depend on.”

“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.”

“I don't know if this is true to you but for mesometimes it gets so badthat anything elsesay likelooking at a bird on an overheadpower lineseems as great as a Beethoven symphony.then you forget it and you're backagain.”

“I wasn’t going anywhere and neither was the rest of the world. We were all just hanging around waiting to die and meanwhile doing little things to fill the space. Some of use weren’t even doing little things. We were vegetables.”

“La gente la sera è in libertà provvisoria dalle fabbriche, dai magazzini, dalle stazioni di servizio, dai macelli. Il giorno dopo tornano dentro, ma adesso sono fuori, ubriachi di libertà. Non pensano alla schiavitù della povertà. I ricchi staranno bene finché i poveri non impareranno a costruire bombe atomiche nei loro seminterrati”

“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.”

“It’s the order of things: each one gets a taste of honey then the knife.”

“I don't remember going to bed, but in the morning, there I was.”

“It wasn’t my day. My week. My month. My year. My life. God damn it.”

“It was hard for me to believe. When recess was over I sat in class and thought about it. My mother had a hole and my father had a dong that shot juice. How could they have things like that and walk around as if everything was normal, and talk about things, and then do it and not tell anybody?”

“WHAT'S WRONG WITH ASSHOLES, BABY? YOU'VE GOT AN ASSHOLE, I'VE GOT AN ASSHOLE! YOU GO TO THE STORE AND BUY A PORTERHOUSE STEAK, THAT HAD AN ASSHOLE! ASSHOLES COVER THE EARTH! IN A WAY TREES HAVE ASSHOLES BUT YOU CAN'T FIND THEM, THEY JUST DROP THEIR LEAVES. YOUR ASSHOLE, MY ASSHOLE, THE WORLD IS FULL OF BILLIONS OF ASSHOLES. THE PRESIDENT HAS AN ASSHOLE, THE CARWASH BOY HAS AN ASSHOLE, THE JUDGE AND THE MURDERER HAVE ASSHOLES . . . EVEN THE PURPLE STICKINPIN HAS AN ASSHOLE!”

“My body gnaws at me from one side and my spirit gnaws at me from the other.”

“There's nothing unusual about love.”

“Censorship is the tool of those who have the need to hide actualities from themselves and from others. Their fear is only their inability to face what is real, and I can't vent any anger against them. I only feel this appalling sadness. Somewhere, in their upbringing, they were shielded against the total facts of our existence. They were only taught to look one way when many ways exist.”

“Sometimes you have to take the whole concept of Art and throw it out on its whore ass.”

“It will rain all this night and we will sleep transfixed by the dark water as our blood runs through our fragile life.”

“I met Betty on the street. "I saw you with that bitch a while back. She's not your kind of woman.""None of them are.”

“the soul has no skin; the soul only has insides that want to sing, finally, can't you hear it, brothers? softly, can't you hear it, brothers? a hot piece of ass and a new Cadillac ain't going to solve a god-damned thing.”

“I've found out why men sign their names to their works- not that they created them but more than the others did not.”

“Oh, I don’t mean you’re handsome, not the way people think of handsome. Your face seems kind. But your eyes - they’re beautiful. They’re wild, crazy, like some animal peering out of a forest on fire.”

“The park grass looked greener, the park benches looked better and the flowers were trying harder.”

“there was something aboutthat city, thoughit didn't let me feel guiltythat I had no feeling for thethings so many othersneeded.it let me alone.”

“Do some living and get yourself a typewriter.”

“now look, she said, stretched out on the bed, I don’t want anything personal, let’s just do it, I don’t want to get involved, got it? she kicked off her high-heeled shoes… sure, he said, standing there, let’s just pretend that we’ve already done it, there’s nothing less involved than that, is there? what the hell do you mean? she asked. I mean, he said, I’d rather drink anyhow. and he poured himself one. it was a lousy night in Vegas and he walked to the window and looked out at the dumb lights. you a fag? she asked, you a god damned fag? no, he said. you don’t have to get shitty,...”

“yes, Wagner and the storm intermix with the wine as nights like this run up my wrists and up into my head and back down into the gut”

“If there are junk yards in hell, love is the dog that guards the gates.”

“There is a time to stop reading, there is a time to STOP trying to WRITE, there is a time to kick the whole bloated sensation of ART out on its whore-ass.”

“I went over to see Marina two or three or four times a week. I knew as long as I could see the girl I would be all right…. Soon after, I got a letter from Fay. She and the child were living in a hippie commune in New Mexico. It was a nice place, she said. Marina would be able to breathe there. She enclosed a little drawing the girl had made for me.”

“Fay had a spot of blood on the left side of her mouth and I took a wet cloth and wiped it off. Women were meant to suffer; no wonder they asked for constant declarations of love.”

“YOU HAVE WOUNDED MY HEART FOREVER!”

“Why do you insist upon destroying yourself?”

“Some nights I knew that if I slept I would die.”

“The world had somehow gone too far, and spontaneous kindness could never be so easy.”

“Are you becoming what you've always hated?”

“And I said to myself that he was the first thing that I had ever missed in my life.”

“I pretend to understand because I don't want anybody to be hurt”

“I lost almost all the blood in my body in 1957”

“There is a place in the heart that will never be filled; a space. And even during the best moments, and the greatest times, we will know it.”

“the best often die by their own hand just to get away, and those left behindcan never quite understand why anybodywould ever want to get away from them”

“cuando estaba en buena forma espiritual, después de comer lavaba el plato inmediatamente".”

“Jos et keksi mitä tekisit, niin ole kiltisti. (Auringonvalo, tässä olen, s. 217)”

“I mean, say that you figure that everything is senseless, then it can't be quite senseless because you are aware that it's senseless and your awareness of senselessness almost gives it sense. You know what I mean?”

“True revolution comes from true revulsion; when things get bad enough the kitten will kill the lion.”

“people run from rain butsitin bathtubs full ofwater.”

“the last cigarettes are smoked, the loaves are sliced,and lest this be taken for wry sorrow,drown the spider in wine.you are much more than simply dead:I am a dish for your ashes,I am a fist for your vanished air.the most terrible thing about lifeis finding it gone.”

“bad writing's like bad women: there's just not much you can do about it”