Danny > Danny's Quotes

“Learn, he says, that there will be hours, days
and months ahead of feeling absolutely terrible
and nothing can change that; neither new
girlfriends, health professionals, changes of diet, dope, humility, or
God. ”
― Charles Bukowski

“I had noticed that both in the very poor and very rich extremes of society the mad were often allowed to mingle freely.”
― Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye

“my mother, poor fish,
wanting to be happy, beaten two or three times a
week, telling me to be happy: "Henry, smile!
why don't you ever smile?"

and then she would smile, to show me how, and it was the
saddest smile I ever saw”
― Charles Bukowski

“I was glad I wasn't in love, that I wasn't happy with the world. I like being at odds with everything. People in love often become edgy, dangerous. They lose their sense of perspective. They lose their sense of humor. They become nervous, psychotic bores. They even become killers.”
― Charles Bukowski, Women

“The Genius Of The Crowd

there is enough treachery, hatred violence absurdity in the average
human being to supply any given army on any given day

and the best at murder are those who preach against it
and the best at hate are those who preach love
and the best at war finally are those who preach peace

those who preach god, need god
those who preach peace do not have peace
those who preach peace do not have love

beware the preachers
beware the knowers
beware those who are always reading books
beware those who either detest poverty
or are proud of it
beware those quick to praise
for they need praise in return
beware those who are quick to censor
they are afraid of what they do not know
beware those who seek constant crowds for
they are nothing alone
beware the average man the average woman
beware their love, their love is average
seeks average

but there is genius in their hatred
there is enough genius in their hatred to kill you
to kill anybody
not wanting solitude
not understanding solitude
they will attempt to destroy anything
that differs from their own
not being able to create art
they will not understand art
they will consider their failure as creators
only as a failure of the world
not being able to love fully
they will believe your love incomplete
and then they will hate you
and their hatred will be perfect

like a shining diamond
like a knife
like a mountain
like a tiger
like hemlock

their finest art”
― Charles Bukowski

“Those faces you see every day on the streets were not created entirely without hope: be kind to them: like you they have not escaped.”
― Charles Bukowski, The People Look Like Flowers at Last

“Human relationships were strange. I mean, you were with one person a while, eating and sleeping and living with them, loving them, talking to them, going places together, and then it stopped. Then there was a short period when you weren't with anybody, then another woman arrived, and you ate with her and fucked her, and it all seemed so normal, as if you had been waiting just for her and she had been waiting for you. I never felt right being alone; sometimes it felt good but it never felt right.”
― Charles Bukowski, Women

“Our disappointment sits between us.”
― Charles Bukowski, The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966

“The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose, they sliced a little more off you, until there was nothing left. At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole goddamned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidate who reminded them most of themselves.”
― Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye

“Are you becoming what you've always hated?”
― Charles Bukowski, Hollywood

“When a hot woman meets a hermit one of them is going to change.”
― Charles Bukowski, What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire

“People who believe in politics are like people who believe in God: they are sucking wind through bent straws.”
― Charles Bukowski

“The less I needed, the better I felt.”
― Charles Bukowski

“I can never drive my car over a bridge without thinking of suicide.
I can never look at a lake or an ocean without thinking of suicide.”
― Charles Bukowski, The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship

“Everything else just kept picking and picking, hacking away. And nothing was interesting, nothing. The people were restrictive and careful, all alike. And I've got to live with these fuckers for the rest of my life, I thought.”
― Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye

“Love is a form of prejudice. You love what you need, you love what makes you feel good, you love what is convenient. How can you say you love one person when there are ten thousand people in the world that you would love more if you ever met them? But you'll never meet them.”
― Charles Bukowski, Hot Water Music

“I loved you
like a man loves a woman he never touches, only
writes to, keeps little photographs of. I would have
loved you more if I had sat in a small room rolling a
cigarette and listened to you piss in the bathroom,
but that didn’t happen. your letters got sadder.
your lovers betrayed you. kid, I wrote back, all
lovers betray.”
― Charles Bukowski, Love Is a Dog from Hell

“I hope that death contains
less than this.”
― Charles Bukowski, Love Is a Dog from Hell

“I will remember the kisses, our lips raw with love,
and how you gave me everything you had
and how I offered you what was left of me.”
― Charles Bukowski

“each man must realize
that it can all disappear very
quickly:
the cat, the woman, the job,
the front tire,
the bed, the walls, the
room; all our necessities
including love,
rest on foundations of sand —
and any given cause,
no matter how unrelated:
the death of a boy in Hong Kong
or a blizzard in Omaha . . .
can serve as your undoing.
all your chinaware crashing to the
kitchen floor, your girl will enter
and you'll be standing, drunk,
in the center of it and she'll ask:
my god, what's the matter?
and you'll answer: I don't know,
I don't know . . .

— PULL A STRING, A PUPPET MOVES . . .”
― Charles Bukowski, Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame

“when we were kids
laying around the lawn
on our
bellies

we often talked
about
how
we'd like to
die

and
we all
agreed on the
same
thing;

we'd all
like to die
fucking

(although
none of us
had
done any
fucking)

and now
that
we are hardly
kids
any longer

we think more
about
how
not to
die

and
although
we're
ready

most of
us
would
prefer to
do it
alone

under the
sheets

now
that

most of
us

have fucked
our lives
away.”
― Charles Bukowski, You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense

“What's genius? I don't know but I do know that the difference between a madman and a professional is that a pro does as well as he can within what
he has set out to do and a madman does exceptionally well at what he can't help doing.”
― Charles Bukowski, What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire

“having nothing to struggle
against
they have nothing to struggle
for.”
― Charles Bukowski, You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense

“people are not good to each other.
perhaps if they were
our deaths would not be so sad.”
― Charles Bukowski, Love Is a Dog from Hell

“Something else is hurting you—that’s why you need pot or whiskey, or whips and rubber suits, or screaming music turned so fucking loud you can’t think.”
― Charles Bukowski, Tales of Ordinary Madness

“People don't need love. What they need is success in one form or another. It can be love but it needn't be.”
― Charles Bukowski, Factotum

“Trapped

don't undress my love
you might find a mannequin:
don't undress the mannequin
you might find
my love.
she's long ago
forgotten me.
she's trying on a new
hat
and looks more the
coquette
than ever.

she is a
child
and a mannequin
and death.
I can't hate
that.
she didn't do
anything
unusual.
I only wanted her
to.”
― Charles Bukowski, Love Is a Dog from Hell

“I didn't like parties.I didn't know how to dance and people frightened me, especially people at parties. They attempted to be sexy and gay and witty and although they hoped they were good at it, they weren 't. They were bad at it. Their trying so hard only made it worse.”
― Charles Bukowski, Hollywood

“Fiction is an improvement on life”
― Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye

“I was settled into nothingness; a kind of non-being, and I accepted it. It 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.”
― Charles Bukowski, Women