Top 450 Charles Bukowski Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 8 of 10

351. “Of course, there would always be arguments. That is the nature of Woman. They like the mutual exchange of dirty laundry, a bit of screaming, a bit of dramatics. Then an exchange of vows.”

— Charles Bukowski

352. “I was fairly poor but most of my money went for wine and classical music. I loved to mix the two together.”

— Charles Bukowski

353. “People were usually much better in their letters than in reality. They were much like poets in this way.”

— Charles Bukowski

354. “There is something about writing poetry that brings a man close to the cliff’s edge.”

— Charles Bukowski

355. “We have wasted History like a bunch of drunks shooting dice back in the men’s crapper of the local bar.”

— Charles Bukowski

356. “An artist is a man who says a difficult thing in a simple way.”

— Charles Bukowski

357. “I seldom know what I’m going to write when I sit down. There isn’t much agony and sweat of the human spirit involved in doing it. The writing’s easy, it’s the living that is sometimes difficult.”

— Charles Bukowski

358. “A woman has to have something on or there’s nothing to take off.”

— Charles Bukowski

359. “I am aware that a computer can’t create a poem, but neither can a typewriter.”

— Charles Bukowski

360. “I was only photographing in words the reality of it all.”

— Charles Bukowski

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

— Charles Bukowski

362. “The centuries are sprinkled with rare magic with divine creatures who help us get past the common and extraordinary ills that beset us.”

— Charles Bukowski

363. “Long ago, among other lies they were taught that silence was bravery.”

— Charles Bukowski

364. “Four days alone with nothing. Emerge empowered. The first human face you see will knock you back 50%.”

— Charles Bukowski

365. “I had noticed that both in the very poor and very rich extremes of society the mad were often allowed to mingle freely.”

— Charles Bukowski

366. “Love came hard and very seldom. When it did it was usually for the wrong reasons.”

— Charles Bukowski

367. “In the morning it was morning and I was still alive.”

— Charles Bukowski

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

— Charles Bukowski

369. “I drive around the streets an inch away from weeping, ashamed of my sentimentality and possible love.”

— Charles Bukowski

370. “If you want to know where God is, ask a drunk.”

— Charles Bukowski

371. “Death meant little to me. It was the last joke in a series of bad jokes.”

— Charles Bukowski

372. “Parties sickened me. I hated the game-playing, the dirty play, the flirting, the amateurs drunks, the bores.”

— Charles Bukowski

373. “People just weren’t interesting. Maybe they weren’t supposed to be. But animals, birds, even insects were. I couldn’t understand it.”

— Charles Bukowski

374. “I hid in bars, because I didn’t want to hide in factories.”

— Charles Bukowski

375. “People need me. I fill them. If they can’t see me for a while they get desperate, they get sick. But if I see them too often I get sick. It’s hard to feed without getting fed.”

— Charles Bukowski

376. “Trouble and pain were what kept a man alive. Or trying to avoid trouble and pain. It was a full time job.”

— Charles Bukowski

377. “I am this fiery snail crawling home.”

— Charles Bukowski

378. “Capitalism has survived communism. Now, it eats away at itself.”

— Charles Bukowski

379. “Sometimes I get too exhausted to even feel bad.”

— Charles Bukowski

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

— Charles Bukowski

381. “That the young rich smell the stink of the poor and learn to find it a bit amusing. They had to laugh, otherwise it would be too terrifying.”

— Charles Bukowski

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

— Charles Bukowski

383. “Sex can sometimes become the most horrible of tasks.”

— Charles Bukowski

384. “I give you soul. I give you wisdom and light and music and a bit of laughter. Also, I am the world’s greatest horseplayer.”

— Charles Bukowski

385. “The pest, in a sense, is a very superior being to us: he knows where to find us and how – usually in the bath or in sexual intercourse or asleep.”

— Charles Bukowski

386. “It’s better to do a dull thing with style than a dangerous thing without it.”

— Charles Bukowski

387. “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.”

— Charles Bukowski

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

— Charles Bukowski

389. “I don’t know if this is true to you but for me sometimes it gets so bad that anything else say like looking at a bird on an overhead power line seems as great as a Beethoven symphony. then you forget it and you’re back again.”

— Charles Bukowski

390. “As a recluse I couldn’t bear traffic. It had nothing to do with jealousy, I simply disliked people, crowds, anywhere, except at my readings. People diminished me, they sucked me dry.”

— Charles Bukowski

391. “The writer has no responsibility other than to jack off in bed alone and write a good page.”

— Charles Bukowski

392. “Art is its own excuse, and it’s either Art or it’s something else. It’s either a poem or a piece of cheese.”

— Charles Bukowski

393. “I would give anything for a female’s hand on me tonight. they soften a man and then leave him listening to the rain.”

— Charles Bukowski

394. “I was their bar freak, they needed me to make themselves feel better. just like, at times, I needed that graveyard.”

— Charles Bukowski

395. “Too often the people complain that they have done nothing with their lives and then they wait for somebody to tell them that this isn’t so.”

— Charles Bukowski

396. “I had no feeling for the things so many others needed.”

— Charles Bukowski

397. “Our disappointment sits between us.”

— Charles Bukowski

398. “Was I the only person who was distracted by this future without a chance?”

— Charles Bukowski

399. “Most people are not ready for death, theirs or anybody elses.”

— Charles Bukowski

400. “I am not a man who looks for solutions in God or politics. If somebody else wants to do the dirty work and create a better world for us and he can do it, I will accept it.”

— Charles Bukowski