Born in Germany and raised in Los Angeles, Charles Bukowski was a prolific writer and poet.
Before becoming a famous writer, he had various jobs such as dishwasher, busboy, truck driver, and post office clerk. Despite being unsuccessful at his jobs before being a writer, he later published over thirty books for which he earned literary respect.
Bukowski’s work has influenced many artists who have created their own pieces of art based on his work. His writing is hard-hitting and accurate to life; it is the story of an alcoholic but has not been censored because of its raw honesty.
Here are the 81 most powerful Charles Bukowski quotes on life, love, and everything in between
“Some people like what you do, some people hate what you do, but most people simply don’t give a damn.”
“The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts. While the stupid ones are full of confidence.”
“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.”
“Writers are desperate people and when they stop being desperate they stop being writers.”
“I wanted the whole world or nothing.”
“Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I’m not going to make it, but you laugh inside — remembering all the times you’ve felt that way.”
“What is terrible is not death but the lives people live or don’t live up until their death.”
“The less I needed, the better I felt.”
“We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.”
“Stop insisting on clearing your head—clear your heart instead.”
“The best often die by their own hand just to get away, and those left behind can never quite understand why anybody would ever want to get away from them.”
“If you’re going to try, go all the way. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It’s the only good fight there is.”
“Nothing is worse than to finish a good shit, then reach over and find the toilet paper container empty. Even the most horrible human being on earth deserves to wipe his ass.”
“Find what you love and let it kill you.”
“I wasn’t much for a petty thief. I wanted the whole world or nothing.”
“The nine-to-five is one of the greatest atrocities sprung upon mankind. You give your life away to a function that doesn’t interest you.”
“What matters most is how well you walk through the fire.”
“If you’re losing your soul and you know it, then you’ve still got a soul left to lose.”
“We don’t even ask happiness, just a little less pain.”
“Some people never go crazy, What truly horrible lives they must live.”
“Things get bad for all of us, almost continually, and what we do under the constant stress reveals who/what we are.”
“An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.”
“Goodness can be found sometimes in the middle of hell.”
“If you get married they think you’re finished and if you are without a woman they think you’re incomplete.”
“There are only two things wrong with money: too much or too little.”
“You’ve to die a few times before you actually live.”
“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.”
“You have to die a few times before you can really live.”
“No light goes out until it goes out. Let’s fight as men, not rats. Period.”
“Great art is horse shit, buy tacos.”
“You give your life away to a function that doesn’t interest you.”
“How the hell could a person enjoy being awakened at 6:30AM, by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?”
“Sometimes you just have to pee in the sink.”
“And yet women-good women–frightened me because they eventually wanted your soul, and what was left of mine, I wanted to keep.”
“Poetry is what happens when nothing else can.”
“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.”
“Bad taste creates many more millionaires than good taste.”
“The nine-to-five is one of the greatest atrocities sprung upon mankind.”
“The free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it – basically because you feel good, very good, when you are near or with them.”
“Beware of those who seek constant crowds; they are nothing alone.”
“Sometimes I’ve called writing a disease. If so, I’m glad that it caught me.”
“A spark can set a whole forest on fire. Just a spark. Save it.”
“The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.”
“If you have the ability to love, love yourself first.”
“People with no morals often considered themselves more free, but mostly they lacked the ability to feel or love.”
“What a woman wants is a reaction. What a man wants is a woman.”
“The tigers have found me and I do not care.”
“You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.”
“My days, my years, my life has seen up and downs, lights and darknesses. If I wrote only and continually of the ‘light’ and never mentioned the other, then as an artist, I would be a liar.”
“I guess the only time most people think about injustice is when it happens to them.”
“My beerdrunk soul is sadder than all the dead Christmas trees of the world.”
“In my work, as a writer, I only photograph, in words, what I see.”
“I want so much that is not here and do not know where to go.”
“Baby, I said, I’m a genius but nobody knows it but me.”
“It’s better to do a dull thing with style than a dangerous thing without it.”
“If I stop writing I am dead. And that’s the only way I’ll stop: dead.”
“People run from rain but sit in bathtubs full of water.”
“Genius might be the ability to say a profound thing in a simple way.”
“Dogs and angels are not very far apart.”
“The free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it—basically because you feel good, very good, when you are near or with them.”
“We must.. We must bring our own light to the darkness”
“I would be married, but I’d have no wife, I would be married to a single life.”
“Sex is kicking death in the ass while singing.”
“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.”
“It’s when you begin to lie to yourself in a poem in order to simply make a poem, that you fail.”
“It’s possible to love a human being if you don’t know them too well.”
“If you want to know who your friends are, get yourself a jail sentence.”
“Almost everybody is born a genius and buried an idiot.”
“I don’t like the clean-shaven boy with the necktie and the good job. I like desperate men, men with broken teeth and broken minds and broken ways. They interest me. They are full of surprises and explosions.”
“We’re all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.”
“I remember awakening one morning and finding everything smeared with the color of forgotten love.”
“Censorship is the tool of those who have the need to hide actualities from themselves and from others.”
“Those who have been writing literature have not been writing life.”
“The more cats you have, the longer you live. If you have a hundred cats, you’ll live 10 times longer than if you have 10. Someday this will be discovered, and people will have a thousand cats and live forever. It’s truly ridiculous.”
“Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must live.”
“Somebody once asked me what my theory of life was, and I said, ‘Don’t try.’ That fits the writing, too. I don’t try; I just type.”
“I kept writing not because I felt I was so good, but because I felt they were so bad, including Shakespeare, all those. The stilted formalism, like chewing cardboard.”
“If I stop writing I am dead. And that’s the only way I’ll stop: dead.”
“When I write, when I’m going hot, I don’t want to write more than four hours in a row. After that, you’re pushing it.”
