Quotes by Charles Bukowski

About Charles Bukowski:

Henry Charles Bukowski was a German-born American poet, novelist, and short story writer.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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

Charles Bukowski

An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.

Charles Bukowski

There will always be something to ruin our lives, it all depends on what or which finds us first. We are always ripe and ready to be taken.

Charles Bukowski

If you want to know who your friends are, get yourself a jail sentence.

Charles Bukowski

The female loves to play man against man. And if she is in a position to do it, there is not one who will resist.

Charles Bukowski

Never envy a man his lady. Behind it all lays a living hell.

Charles Bukowski

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

Charles Bukowski

Meanwhile the 3 a.m. drunks of the world would lay in their beds, trying in vain to sleep, and deserving that rest, if they could find it.

Charles Bukowski

when Whitman wrote, “I sing the body electric” I know what he meant I know what he wanted: to be completely alive every moment in spite of the inevitable. we can’t cheat death but we can make it work so hard that when it does take us it will ha...

Charles Bukowski

as a child i suppose i was not quite normal. my happiest times were when i was left alone in the house on a saturday.

Charles Bukowski

I was alone with myself. And disgusting as I was it was better than being with somebody else, anybody else, all of them out there doing their pitiful little tricks and handsprings.

Charles Bukowski

Style is the answer to everything. A fresh way to approach a dull or dangerous thing To do a dull thing with style is preferable to doing a dangerous thing without it To do a dangerous thing with style is what I call art Bullfighting can be an art Bo...

Charles Bukowski

the way to create art is to burn and destroy ordinary concepts and to substitute them with new truths that run down from the top of the head and out of the heart

Charles Bukowski

For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not...

Charles Bukowski

There is no such thing as beauty, especially in the human face… what we call the physiognomy. It’s all a mathematical and imagined alignment of features. Like, if the nose doesn’t stick out too much, the sides are in fashion, if the earlobes ar...

Charles Bukowski

Most so-called brave people lack imagination. As though they can’t conceive of what would happen if something went wrong. The truly brave overcome their imagination and do what they have to do.

Charles Bukowski

Most so-called brave people lack imagination. As though they can’t conceive of what would happen if something went wrong. The truly brave overcome their imagination and do what they have to do. 2

Charles Bukowski

when I am feeling low all i have to do is watch my cats and my courage returns

Charles Bukowski

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...

Charles Bukowski

There is a quality about women who choose men sparingly; it appears in their walk in their eyes in their laughter and in their gentle hearts.

Charles Bukowski

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

Charles Bukowski

Author Bio

  • NameCharles Bukowski
  • DescriptionAmerican writer
  • BornAugust 16, 1920
  • DiedMarch 9, 1994
  • CountryGermany; United States Of America
  • ProfessionActor; Writer; Screenwriter; Poet; Novelist