Top 450 Charles Bukowski Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Find what you love and let it kill you.”

— Charles Bukowski

Featured in: Inspirational Entrepreneurship Quotes

2. “If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even start.”

— Charles Bukowski

Featured in: Perseverance Quotes, Effort Quotes, Taking Action Quotes, Passion Quotes

3. “Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.”

— Charles Bukowski

Featured in: Fiction Quotes, Hard Hitting Quotes, Crazy Quotes, Creative Quotes

4. “The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.”

— Charles Bukowski

Featured in: Faith Quotes, Humor Quotes

5. “Understand me. I’m not like an ordinary world. I have my madness, I live in another dimension and I do not have time for things that have no soul.”

— Charles Bukowski

Featured in: Soul Quotes, Quotes About the World

6. “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.”

— Charles Bukowski

Featured in: Meaningful Quotes, Boldness Quotes, Effort Quotes, Fighting Quotes

7. “You have to die a few times before you can really live.”

— Charles Bukowski

8. “Life’s as kind as you let it be.”

— Charles Bukowski

Featured in: Short Quotes About Life, Live Life Quotes

9. “If you have the ability to love, love yourself first.”

— Charles Bukowski

Featured in: Self-Esteem Quotes, Self-Worth Quotes, Self-Love Quotes, Love You Quotes

10. “Without literature, life is hell.”

— Charles Bukowski

Featured in: Deep Quotes About Life, Fiction Quotes, Depressing Quotes, Sad Quotes

11. “An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.”

— Charles Bukowski

Featured in: Artist Quotes

12. “I don’t hate people. I just feel better when they aren’t around.”

— Charles Bukowski

Featured in: Demotivational Quotes

13. “I have no time for things that have no soul.”

— Charles Bukowski

Featured in: Soul Quotes

14. “If something burns your soul with purpose and desire, it’s your duty to be reduced to ashes by it. Any other form of existence will be yet another dull book in the library of life.”

— Charles Bukowski

Featured in: Desire Quotes, Soul Quotes, Book Quotes

15. “We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.”

— Charles Bukowski

Featured in: Live Life Quotes, Boldness Quotes, Life Is Short Quotes, Carpe Diem Quotes

16. “Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I’m not going to make it, but you laugh inside – remembering all the times you’ve felt that way.”

— Charles Bukowski

Featured in: Life is Hard Quotes

17. “Wherever the crowd goes, run in the other direction. They’re always wrong.”

— Charles Bukowski

Featured in: Demotivational Quotes

18. “The less I needed, the better I felt.”

— Charles Bukowski

Featured in: Contentment Quotes

19. “Invent yourself and then reinvent yourself.”

— Charles Bukowski

Featured in: Creativity Quotes, Self-Realization Quotes, Personality Quotes, Identity Quotes

20. “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

Featured in: Depressing Quotes, Sad Quotes About Life, Depression Quotes

21. “Writers are desperate people and when they stop being desperate they stop being writers.”

— Charles Bukowski

Featured in: Quotes About Writing, Depressing Quotes, Struggle Quotes

22. “Nothing can save you except writing. It keeps the walls from failing.”

— Charles Bukowski

Featured in: Quotes About Writing, Creative Quotes

23. “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.”

— Charles Bukowski

Featured in: Sad Quotes, Life Is Short Quotes, Suffering Quotes, Quotes About Reality

24. “Drink from the well of yourself and begin again.”

— Charles Bukowski

Featured in: Focus On Yourself Quotes

25. “Don’t fight your demons. Your demons are here to teach you lessons. Sit down with your demons and have a drink and a chat and learn their names and talk about the burns on their fingers and scratches on their ankles. Some of them are very nice.”

— Charles Bukowski

26. “I wanted the whole world or nothing.”

— Charles Bukowski

Featured in: Desire Quotes, Quotes About the World

27. “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

Featured in: Hate Quotes

28. “We don’t even ask happiness, just a little less pain.”

— Charles Bukowski

Featured in: Depressing Quotes, Suffering Quotes, Pain Quotes, Hurt Quotes

29. “People empty me. I have to get away to refill.”

— Charles Bukowski

30. “You can’t beat death but you can beat death in life, sometimes. And the more often you learn to do it, the more light there will be. Your life is your life. Know it while you have it.”

— Charles Bukowski

Featured in: Hard Hitting Quotes, Life Is Short Quotes, Quotes About Light

31. “There’s a light somewhere. It may not be much light but it beats the darkness.”

— Charles Bukowski

Featured in: Quotes About Light

32. “Simplicity is always the secret to a profound truth, to doing things, to writing, to painting. Life is profound in its simplicity.”

— Charles Bukowski

Featured in: Simplicity Quotes

33. “If you let them kill you, they will.”

— Charles Bukowski

Featured in: Hard Hitting Quotes, Depressing Quotes

34. “If you’re going to try, go all the way. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives, jobs and maybe your mind.”

— Charles Bukowski

Featured in: Boldness Quotes, Grit Quotes, Not Giving Up Quotes, Artist Quotes

35. “I stopped looking for a Dream Girl, I just wanted one that wasn’t a nightmare.”

— Charles Bukowski

Featured in: Toxic Relationship Quotes

36. “Beware of those who seek constant crowds; they are nothing alone.”

— Charles Bukowski

Featured in: Demotivational Quotes

37. “Only the boring get bored.”

— Charles Bukowski

38. “If you are going to try, go all the way or don’t even start. If you follow it you will be alive with the gods. It is the only good fight there is.”

— Charles Bukowski

Featured in: Grit Quotes, Fighting Quotes, Quotes About Trying, Not Giving Up Quotes

39. ““Baby,” I said, “I’m a genius but nobody knows it but me.””

— Charles Bukowski

Featured in: Ego Quotes, Genius Quotes

40. “The world is full of boring, identical and mindless people.”

— Charles Bukowski

41. “My heart is a thousand years old. I am not like other people.”

— Charles Bukowski

42. “The free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it.”

— Charles Bukowski

Featured in: Soul Quotes

43. “Those who escape hell, however, never talk about it, and nothing much bothers them after that.”

— Charles Bukowski

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

— Charles Bukowski

45. “My ambition is handicapped by laziness.”

— Charles Bukowski

Featured in: Ambition Quotes

46. “I was a man who thrived on solitude; without it I was like another man without food or water. Each day without solitude weakened me. I took no pride in my solitude; but I was dependent on it. The darkness of the room was like sunlight to me.”

— Charles Bukowski

Featured in: Loneliness Quotes, Solitude Quotes

47. “I am not a snob; it is simply that I am not interested in what most people have to say, or what they want to do – mostly with my time.”

— Charles Bukowski

48. “Love breaks my bones and I laugh.”

— Charles Bukowski

Featured in: Love Hurts Quotes, Quotes About Laughing

49. “The empty, the angry, the lonely, the tricked, we are all museums of fear.”

— Charles Bukowski

Featured in: Sad Quotes, Fear Quotes, Loneliness Quotes, Lonely Quotes

50. “The courage it took to get out of bed each morning to face the same things over and over was enormous.”

— Charles Bukowski

Featured in: Life is Hard Quotes, Depressing Quotes