Charles Bukowski Quotes

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

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.

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

Show me a man who lives alone and has a perpetually clean kitchen, and 8 times out of 9 I'll show you a man with detestable spiritual qualities.

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

“Do you hate people?” “I dont hate them...I just feel better when theyre not around.”

“For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who cant readily accept the God formula, the big answers dont remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.”

“Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, Im not going to make it, but you laugh inside — remembering all the times youve felt that way.”

“what matters most is how well you walk through the fire”

“Were all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesnt. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.”