Charles Bukowski Quotes

Biography: Charles Bukowski is known for his raw, gritty poetry and prose that re... more Biography: Charles Bukowski is known for his raw, gritty poetry and prose that reflect his experiences with the urban underclass. Born in Germany in 1920, he moved to the United States as a child and grew up in Los Angeles. Bukowski's work, often autobiographical, explores themes of alcoholism, relationships, and the drudgery of blue-collar jobs. He gained a cult following for his unvarnished, direct style. less

"Find what you love and let it kill you. Let it drain you""People are the strangest things. They leave you and they don't even leave you alone.""What is terrible is not death but the lives people live or don't live up until their death.""Genius might be the ability to say a profound thing in a simple way.""The less I needed, the better I felt.""If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives, jobs and maybe your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail, it could mean derision, mockery, isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is.""You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.""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.""An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.""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.""I carry death in my left pocket. Sometimes I take it out and talk to it. I say, Hello, baby, how you doing? When you coming for me? I’ll be ready.""Real loneliness is not necessarily limited to when you are alone.""People are strange: they are constantly angered by trivial things, but on a major matter like totally wasting their lives, they hardly seem to notice.""I guess the only time most people think about injustice is when it happens to them.""The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.""What matters most is how well you walk through the fire.""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.""If you're losing your soul and you know it, then you've still got a soul left to lose.""I wanted the whole world or nothing.""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."

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