Sarah > Sarah's Quotes

“What a weary time those years were -- to have the desire and the need to live but not the ability.”
― Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye

“there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're there,
so don't be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don't
weep, do
you?”
― 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.”
― Charles Bukowski

“dogs and angels are not
very far apart”
― Charles Bukowski, The People Look Like Flowers at Last

“each man's hell is in a different place:
mine is just up and behind
my ruined face.”
― Charles Bukowski

“I sit here
drunk now.
I am
a series of
small victories
and large defeats
and I am as
amazed
as any other
that
I have gotten
from there to
here
without committing murder
or being
murdered;
without
having ended up in the
madhouse.

as I drink alone
again tonight
my soul despite all the past
agony
thanks all the gods
who were not
there
for me
then.”
― Charles Bukowski, The People Look Like Flowers at Last

“She was desperate and she was choosey
at the same time and, in a way, beautiful, but she didn't have quite enough going for her to become what
she imagined herself to be.”
― Charles Bukowski, Factotum

“whiskey makes the heart beat faster
but it sure doesn't help the
mind and isn't it funny how you can ache just
from the deadly drone of
existence?”
― Charles Bukowski, The People Look Like Flowers at Last

“I wasn't a misanthrope and I wasn't a misogynist but I liked being alone. It felt good to sit alone in a small space and smoke and drink. I had always been good company for myself.”
― Charles Bukowski

“I was a man who thrived on solitude; without it I was like another man without food or water. Each day without solitude weakened me. I took no pride in my solitude; but I was dependent on it. The darkness of the
room was like sunlight to me.”
― Charles Bukowski, Factotum

“I want so much that is not here and do not know
where to go.”
― Charles Bukowski, The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966

“I suppose like others
I have come through fire and sword,
love gone wrong,
head-on crashes, drunk at sea,
and I have listened to the simple sound of water running
in tubs
and wished to drown”
― Charles Bukowski, The People Look Like Flowers at Last

“I often carry things to read
so that I will not have to look at
the people.”
― Charles Bukowski, The Last Night of the Earth Poems

“one can never be sure whether it's good poetry or bad acid”
― Charles Bukowski, Love Is a Dog from Hell

“There is nothing that teaches you more than regrouping
after failure and moving on. Yet most people are stricken with
fear. They fear failure so much that they fail. They are too
conditioned, too used to being told what to do. It begins with
the family, runs through school and goes into the business
world.”
― Charles Bukowski, The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship

“there is always one woman to save you from another and as that woman saves you she makes ready to destroy”
― Charles Bukowski, Love Is a Dog from Hell

“You have my soul and I have your money”
― Charles Bukowski

“writers are desperate people and when they stop being desperate they stop being writers.”
― Charles Bukowski

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

“nothing can save
you
except
writing.
it keeps the walls
from
failing.”
― Charles Bukowski

“I want to
let her know
though
that all the nights
sleeping
beside her

even the useless
arguments
were things
ever splendid

and the hard
words
I ever feared to
say
can now be
said:

I love
you.”
― Charles Bukowski

“I like to change liquor stores frequently because the clerks got to know your habits if you went in night and day and bought huge quantities. I could feel them wondering why I wasn't dead yet and it made me uncomfortable. They probably weren't thinking any such thing, but then a man gets paranoid when he has 300 hangovers a year.”
― Charles Bukowski, Women

“I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there”
― Bukowski C.

“That was all a man needed: hope. It was lack of hope that discouraged a man.”
― Charles Bukowski, Factotum

“Beware
Those Who
Are ALWAYS
READING
BOOKS”
― Charles Bukowski, The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966

“And yet women-good women--frightened me because they eventually wanted your soul, and what was left of mine, I wanted to keep.”
― Charles Bukowski, Women

“Each person is only given so many evenings and each wasted evening is a gross violation against the natural course of your only life.”
― Charles Bukowski

“Lighting new cigarettes,
pouring more
drinks.

It has been a beautiful
fight.

Still
is.”
― Charles Bukowski, You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense

“nobody ever finds
the one”
― Charles Bukowski

“What? You’d dare drink right after getting out of jail for intoxication?”
That’s when you need a drink the most.”
― Charles Bukowski, Factotum