Top 450 Charles Bukowski Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don’t have to waste your time voting.”

— Charles Bukowski

52. “I felt like crying but nothing came out. it was just a sort of sad sickness, sick sad, when you can’t feel any worse. I think you know it. I think everybody knows it now and then. but I think I have known it pretty often, too often.”

— Charles Bukowski

53. “The crowd is the gathering place of the weakest; true creation is a solitary act.”

— Charles Bukowski

54. “I’ve had so many knives stuck into me, when they hand me a flower I can’t quite make out what it is. It takes time.”

— Charles Bukowski

55. “There’s a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out.”

— Charles Bukowski

56. “It’s possible to love a human being if you don’t know them too well.”

— Charles Bukowski

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

— Charles Bukowski

58. “Death is not the problem; waiting around for it is.”

— Charles Bukowski

59. “Let it die. Let there be a new beginning. It’s awful. Goodnight.”

— Charles Bukowski

60. “You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.”

— Charles Bukowski

61. “Real loneliness is not necessarily limited to when you are alone.”

— Charles Bukowski

62. “The area dividing the brain and the soul Is affected in many ways by experience – Some lose all mind and become soul: insane. Some lose all soul and become mind: intellectual. Some lose both and become: accepted.”

— Charles Bukowski

63. “If I never see you again, I will always carry you, inside, outside, on my fingertips, and at brain edges, and in centers, centers of what I am, of what remains.”

— Charles Bukowski

64. “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.”

— Charles Bukowski

65. “If I stop writing I am dead. And that’s the only way I’ll stop: dead.”

— Charles Bukowski

66. “Before my death I hope to obtain my life.”

— Charles Bukowski

67. “There’s music in everything, even defeat.”

— Charles Bukowski

68. “To create art means to be crazy alone forever.”

— Charles Bukowski

69. “Poetry is what happens when nothing else can.”

— Charles Bukowski

70. “The secret is writing down one simple line after another.”

— Charles Bukowski

71. “We are all museums of fear.”

— Charles Bukowski

72. “The more cats you have, the longer you live. If you have a hundred cats, you’ll live ten times longer than if you have ten. Someday this will be discovered, and people will have a thousand cats and live forever.”

— Charles Bukowski

73. “And yet women-good women – frightened me because they eventually wanted your soul, and what was left of mine, I wanted to keep.”

— Charles Bukowski

74. “I am a poem. There is no way out.”

— Charles Bukowski

75. “I no longer want it all, just some comfort and some sex and some minor love.”

— Charles Bukowski

76. “Don’t wait for the good woman. She doesn’t exist. There are women who can make you feel more with their bodies and their souls but these are the exact women who will turn the knife into you right in front of the crowd.”

— Charles Bukowski

77. “I want to let her know though that all the nights sleeping beside her even the useless arguments were things ever splendid and the hard words I ever feared to say can now be said: I love you.”

— Charles Bukowski

78. “I am ashamed to be a member of the human race but I don’t want to add any more to that shame, I want to scrape a little of it off.”

— Charles Bukowski

79. “Why did I come here? I thought. Why is it always only a matter of choosing between something bad and something worse?”

— Charles Bukowski

80. “That was all a man needed: hope. It was lack of hope that discouraged a man.”

— Charles Bukowski

81. “Lighting new cigarettes, pouring more drinks. It has been a beautiful fight. Still is.”

— Charles Bukowski

82. “A spark can set a whole forest on fire. Just a spark. Save it.”

— Charles Bukowski

83. “People don’t need love. What they need is success in one form or another. It can be love but it needn’t be.”

— Charles Bukowski

84. “I never met another man I’d rather be. And even if that’s a delusion, it’s a lucky one.”

— Charles Bukowski

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

— Charles Bukowski

86. “There’s a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I’m too tough for him, I say, stay in there, I’m not going to let anybody see you.”

— Charles Bukowski

87. “Existence was not only absurd, it was plain hard work. Think of how many times you put on your underwear in a lifetime. It was appalling, it was disgusting, it was stupid.”

— Charles Bukowski

88. “Bad luck for the young poet would be a rich father, an early marriage, an early success or the ability to do anything well.”

— Charles Bukowski

89. “Look, let me put it this way: with me, you’re number one and there isn’t even a number two.”

— Charles Bukowski

90. “I tell you such fine music waits in the shadows of hell.”

— Charles Bukowski

91. “Those who preach god, need god Those who preach peace do not have peace Those who preach love do not have love.”

— Charles Bukowski

92. “Lawyers, doctors, plumbers, they all made the money. Writers? Writers starved. Writers suicided. Writers went mad.”

— Charles Bukowski

93. “I’m too careless. I don’t put out enough effort. I’m tired.”

— Charles Bukowski

94. “I can almost understand why people leap from bridges.”

— Charles Bukowski

95. “Humanity, you never had it to begin with.”

— Charles Bukowski

96. “Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit.”

— Charles Bukowski

97. “Each man’s hell is in a different place: mine is just up and behind my ruined face.”

— Charles Bukowski

98. “I’ve never been lonely. I like myself. I’m the best form of entertainment I have. Let’s drink more wine!”

— Charles Bukowski

99. “I guess the only time most people think about injustice is when it happens to them.”

— Charles Bukowski

100. “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.”

— Charles Bukowski