Phrases by Charles Bukowski: aphorisms, quotations


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Phrases by Charles Bukowski, beautiful quotes and famous aphorisms of this great American poet and writer, author of novels, stories and poems where he talks about his life.


Quotes Charles Bukowski

- I passed two hundred people and could not see a single human being.

- People don't need affection. What he needs is success, in one form or another. Maybe successful in love, but not necessarily.


- I tell women that the face is my experience and the hands are my soul. Whatever, just to pull those panties down.

- For me, writing is taking death out of your pocket, throwing it against the wall and catching it on the fly.

- My advice to young writers is to stop looking for advice from old writers.


- People are the biggest show in the world. And you don't pay the ticket.

- Too many people who failed in everything else voted to art and then continued to fail there too.

- If I start talking about love and stars, please: take me down.


- Women like dirty laundry throws, screams, tragedies. Then the exchanges of promises. I wasn't very good with promises.

- They run as if they had fire under their ass looking for something that is not found. It's basically about the fear of facing yourself, it's basically about the fear of being alone.

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- It must be strange to live with me. It is strange for me too.

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

- Sex is an interesting thing but it does not have a decisive importance. That is, it is less important, from a physiological point of view, than defecation. A man can go on for 70 years without a pussy but he can die in a week if his guts don't move.

- I love the lonely, the different, the ones you never meet. Those lost, gone, spirited, screwed. Those with a soul on fire.

- Madness is relative, who sets normality?

- Beware of those who are constantly looking for the crowd, alone they are nobody.

- Hospitals and galleys and whores: here are the universities of life. I have taken several degrees. Call me doctor.


- You are all so good, you are all so cool, you are all so righteous and yet the world out there is still full of shitty people.

- Love is only the result of a casual encounter. People give it too much importance. For this reason, a good fuck is far from despised.

- Here is the problem of who drinks, I thought pouring another one: if something bad happens you drink to forget; if something beautiful happens, you drink to celebrate; if nothing happens, you drink to make something happen.

- The world would be a shitty place without women. Woman is poetry. Woman is love. Woman is life. Thank you, asshole!

- Marriage, God, children, relatives and work. Don't you realize that any idiot can live like this and most do it?

- For each Joan of Arc there is a Hitler perched on the other end of the swing. The old story of good and evil.


- Don't wait for the right woman. Does not exist. There are women who can make you feel something more with their body or their soul, but they are exactly the same who will stab you right in front of the crowd.

- What could a poet do without torment? He needs it like his typewriter.

Aphorisms Charles Bukowski

- One of the greatest works of art in the world: a woman with beautiful legs getting out of the car.

- Some people don't deserve our smile, let alone our tears.

- Many times one has to fight so hard for life that one has no time to live it.

- The smart ones always fuck us at the right time, in the right place, with the right smile. They walk with contempt even over their shit.

- They are the exceptional types that make the world go round. They work miracles, while we sit with the ass soaking.

- We all have to die, all of us, what a circus! If it were not for this reason we should all love each other and instead no, we are crushed by platitudes, we are devoured by nothing.

- I looked around. There was no woman there in that cafe. I fell back on the thing that is in second place in the ranking: I raised my glass and drained it.

- If I don't write for a week I get sick, I can't walk anymore, my head turns, I vomit, I don't get out of bed.I need to type. If they cut my hands I would write with my feet. So I never wrote for the money, I wrote for this imbecile stimulus.

- I am my god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the state church, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill the war. We are here to laugh at the chance and live our lives so well that death will tremble.

- I was bankrupt, the government was bankrupt, the world was bankrupt. But who the fuck had the fucking money?


- Mankind has many weaknesses, but the main two were: inability to arrive on time and inability to keep promises.

- Think of all the millions of people who live together even if they don't like it, who hate their job and are afraid of losing it: it's no wonder that their faces look like they have.

- Poetry is worth something, believe me. It prevents you from going completely crazy.

- There are people who always have to go somewhere ... "let's go to the cinema!", "Let's go to the boat!", "Let's go to fuck!", "Go to shit everyone", I always say, "leave me alone here".

- Resisting makes sense only if you come out with something in your hand at the end. But resisting just to resist is the unfortunate condition of millions of people.

- Madmen and drunks are the last saints on earth.

- Slavery has not been eliminated at all, it has only been enlarged to include nine tenths of the population.

- Wherever the crowd goes you run in the other direction. They are always wrong.

- Obviously it is possible to love a human being, if you don't know him well enough.

- Most people were crazy. And the part that wasn't crazy was angry. And the part that was neither mad nor angry was simply stupid.

- What happened to simplicity? We all seem to be put on a stage and we all feel compelled to show.

- Love is a form of prejudice. We love what we need, what makes us feel good, what makes us comfortable. How can you say that you love a person, when there are thousands of people in the world that you could love more, if only you met them? The thing is, you don't meet them.


- There are times when madness becomes so real that it is no longer madness.

- There is no more beautiful woman than the one who passes under your window and a moment later she is gone.

- Paradoxically, people who believe they always know everything are the ones who never understand shit.

Phrases Charles Bukowski

- Why do I drink? Because I can't face life when I'm sober.

- The man with the kitchen always in order is, however, a maniac. Diffidatene. The state of his kitchen and that of his mind coincide: he, so precise and orderly, actually let himself be influenced by life.

- Do not be down because your woman has left you: you will find another one and she will leave you too.

- The best reader and the best human being are those who make me the grace of their absence.

- The free soul is rare, but when you see it you recognize it, especially because you feel a sense of well-being when you are close to it.

- Women were destined to suffer; it was no wonder that they always wanted great declarations of love.

- It takes a certain dosage, between solitude and crowd. A certain balance here is the trick, not to end between four padded walls.

- Style is a useful tool to say what you have to say, but when you have nothing more to say, style is a soft cock in front of the wonderful pussy of the universe.

- I don't trust statistics much, because a man with his head in the oven turned on and his feet in the freezer statistically has an average temperature.


- A good poet never knows who and what he is, he is one step away from the edge of the abyss, but there is nothing sacred in what he does, it is a job like washing the floors of a bar.

- Religion is fine in hospitals. God enjoys a certain popularity in such places.

- The bosses? Soulless and of mediocre intellect, relentless with subordinates.

- I knew the tails were killing me. I could not accept them, unlike all the others. All the others were normal. Life was good for them. They could queue without pain. They could queue and stay there forever.

- How the fuck can you think it's fun to wake up at half past six with the ringer, jump out of bed, get dressed, swallow something reluctantly, shit, piss, brush your teeth and hair and throw yourself in traffic to arrive in a place where you essentially did they make a lot of money for someone else and also be grateful to who gave you the chance to do it?

- Lovers often become nervous, dangerous. They lose their sense of reality. They lose their sense of humor. They become irritable, psychotic and boring. They even kill people.

- Sometimes I look at my hands and I realize that I could have become a great pianist or something. But what have my hands done? They scratched my balls, wrote checks, tied their shoes, pulled the toilet chain, etc. I wasted my hands. And the head.

- People going up and down escalators, in elevators, driving cars, garage doors that open at the push of a button. Then they go to the gym to get rid of the fat.

- Where did the women come from? There was an infinite supply. Each of them was different, unique. They had different flukes, different breasts, different mouths, but no man could enjoy them all, there were too many, with crossed legs, to drive men crazy. What a damn thing!

- I don't like perfectly shaved men, with ties and good work. I like desperate men, with broken teeth, broken brains and a disgusting life.

- Sometimes I thought of the liver, but he never spoke, he never said: "Stop it, you are killing me and I will kill you!" If we had the talking liver we wouldn't need the Alcoholics Anonymous.

- I started looking at them up my legs. I've always liked my legs. It was the first thing I saw when I was born. But then I was trying to get out. From then on I have always tried to go in the other direction, but with rather poor luck.


- Life just made me horror. I was terrified of what had to be done just to eat sleep and put on some rag. So I stayed in bed drinking. When you drink the world is always out there waiting for you but for a while at least it doesn't take you by the throat.

- I had her hold up her stockings and high-heeled shoes. I'm a freak. I can't stand a natural body, I need to be fooled. Psychiatrists have a specific term for this, and I have a specific term for psychiatrists.

- Sexual intercourse is kicking death in the ass while you are singing.

51 Popular Charles Bukowski's Quotes (April 2024)


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