Charles Bukowski

she slammed the door andwas gone.I looked at the closed doorand at the doorknoband strangelyI didn't feelalone.

the grace is being able to like rock music,symphony music, jazz _anything that contains the original energy ofjoy.

(the whole world is at thethroat of the world,everybody feels angry,short-changed, cheated,everybody is despondent,disillusioned.)I welcomed shots of peace, tattered shards ofhappiness.

The centuries are sprinkled with rare magicwith divine creatureswho help us get past the common and extraordinary ills that beset us

There was nothing glorious about the life of a drinker or the life of a writer.

people who eat 3 meals a day throughout lifehave never reallytastedFood...

When I get down to my last dime I'll just walk over to skid row.""There are some real weirdos down there.""They're everywhere.

What a weary time those years were -- to have the desire and the need to live but not the ability.

I had noticed that both in the very poor and very rich extremes of society the mad were often allowed to mingle freely.

and our few good times will be rare because we have the critical senseand are not easy to fool with laughter

don__ be like so many writers,don__ be like so many thousands ofpeople who call themselves writers,don__ be dull and boring andpretentious, don__ be consumed with self-love.the libraries of the world haveyawned themselves tosleepover your kind.don__ add to that.don__ do it.

If you have the ability to love, love yourself first.

We don__ even ask happiness, just a little less pain.

She was perfect, pure maddening sex, and she knew it, and she played on it, dripped it, and allowed you to suffer for it.

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.

I canalmost understandwhypeopleleapfrombridges.

Why does a man destroy himself or what destroys him? I would have to judge that suicide is mostly the tool of the thinking man. The right to suicide should be the same as the right to love.

we know God is dead, they_ toldus, but listening to you I wasn_ sure. maybeit was the upper case. you were one of thebest female poets and I told the publishers, editors, _ her, print her, she_ mad but she__agic. there_ no lie in her fire._ I loved youlike a man loves a woman he never touches, onlywrites to, keeps little photographs of. I would haveloved you more if I had sat in a small room rolling acigarette and listened to you piss in the bathroom,but that didn_ happen. your letters got sadder.your lovers betrayed you. kid, I wrote back, alllovers betray. it didn_ help. you saidyou had a crying bench and it was by a bridge andthe bridge was over a river and you sat on the cryingbench every night and wept for the lovers who hadhurt and forgotten you. I wrote back but neverheard again. a friend wrote me of your suicide3 or 4 months after it happened. if I had met youI would probably have been unfair to you or youto me. it was best like this.