1,615 Quotes by Charles Bukowski

I was drawn to all the wrong things: I liked to drink, I was lazy, I didn’t have a god, politics, ideas, ideals. I was settled into nothingness; a kind of non-being, and I accepted it. I didn’t make for an interesting person. I didn’t want to be interesting, it was too hard. What I really wanted was only a soft, hazy space to live in, and to be left alone. On the other hand, when I got drunk I screamed, went crazy, got all out of hand. One kind of behavior didn’t fit the other. I didn’t care

SIR! SIR! SIR! FORGET THAT 'SIR' STUFF, WILL YOU? I'll bet if that were the president or governor or mayor or some rich son of a bitch, there would be doctors all over that room doing something! Why do you just let them die? What's the sin in being poor?

I entered the worldoncemore,drove down thehillpast the housesfull and emptyofpeople,I saw the mailman,honked,he wavedbackat me.

A cat is only itself.

The cat is the beautiful devil.

I don’t like love as a command, as a search. It must come to you, like a hungry cat at the door.

Writing is also my cat. Writing lets me face it.

I view his furry storage tanks – what can a man think about while looking at a cat’s nuts? Certainly not the sunken navies of great sea battles.

when Whitman wrote, “I sing the body electric”I know what hemeantI know what hewanted:to be completely alive every momentin spite of the inevitable.we can’t cheat death but we can make itwork so hardthat when it does takeusit will have known a victory just asperfect asours