Charles Bukowski

I do think that poetry is important though, if you don__ strive at it, if you don__ fill it full of stars and falseness.

sometimes when everything seems atits worstwhen all conspiresand gnawsand the hours, days, weeksyearsseem wasted _ stretched there upon my bedin the darklooking upward at the ceilingi get what many will consider anobnoxious thought:it__ still nice to beBukowski.

I wish to weepbut sorrow isstupid.I wish to believebut belief is agraveyard.

I went over to see Marina two or three or four times a week. I knew as long as I could see the girl I would be all right_. Soon after, I got a letter from Fay. She and the child were living in a hippie commune in New Mexico. It was a nice place, she said. Marina would be able to breathe there. She enclosed a little drawing the girl had made for me.

Belane, are you nuts?"Who knows? Insanity is comparative. Who sets the norm?

when I am feelinglowall i have to do iswatch my catsand mycouragereturns

Hell, I'd even failed with women. Three wives. Nothing really wrong each time. It all got destroyed by petty bickering. Railing about nothing. Getting pissed-off over anything and everything. Day by day, year by year, grinding. Instead of helping each other you just sliced away, picked at this or that. Goading. Endless goading. It became a cheap contest. And once you got into it, it became habitual. You couldn't seem to get out. You almost didn't want to get out. And then you did get out. All the way.

Poetry is what happens when nothing else can.

Genius could be the ability to say a profound thing in a simple way, or even to say a simple thing in a simpler way.

The Genius Of The Crowdthere is enough treachery, hatred violence absurdity in the averagehuman being to supply any given army on any given dayand the best at murder are those who preach against itand the best at hate are those who preach loveand the best at war finally are those who preach peacethose who preach god, need godthose who preach peace do not have peacethose who preach peace do not have lovebeware the preachersbeware the knowersbeware those who are always reading booksbeware those who either detest povertyor are proud of itbeware those quick to praisefor they need praise in returnbeware those who are quick to censorthey are afraid of what they do not knowbeware those who seek constant crowds forthey are nothing alonebeware the average man the average womanbeware their love, their love is averageseeks averagebut there is genius in their hatredthere is enough genius in their hatred to kill youto kill anybodynot wanting solitudenot understanding solitudethey will attempt to destroy anythingthat differs from their ownnot being able to create artthey will not understand artthey will consider their failure as creatorsonly as a failure of the worldnot being able to love fullythey will believe your love incompleteand then they will hate youand their hatred will be perfectlike a shining diamondlike a knifelike a mountainlike a tigerlike hemlocktheir finest art

But then if you lied to a man about his talent just because he was sitting across from you, that was the most unforgivable lie of them all, because that was telling him to go on, to continue which was the worst way for a man without real talent to waste his life, finally. But many people did just that, friends and relatives mostly.

Potential," I said, "doesn't mean a thing. You've got to do it. Almost every baby in a crib has more potential than I have.

The cat is the beautiful devil.

to ask them to legalize pot is something like asking them to put butter on the handcuffs before they place them on you, 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, or madhouses or mechanical cunts or 162 baseball games in a season. or vietnam or israel or the fear of spiders. your love washing her yellow false teeth in the sink before you screw.

Style is the answer to everything.A fresh way to approach a dull or dangerous thingTo do a dull thing with style is preferable to doing a dangerous thing without itTo do a dangerous thing with style is what I call artBullfighting can be an artBoxing can be an artLoving can be an artOpening a can of sardines can be an artNot many have styleNot many can keep styleI have seen dogs with more style than men,although not many dogs have style.Cats have it with abundance.When Hemingway put his brains to the wall with a shotgun,that was style.Or sometimes people give you styleJoan of Arc had styleJohn the BaptistJesusSocratesCaesarGarcía Lorca.I have met men in jail with style.I have met more men in jail with style than men out of jail.Style is the difference, a way of doing, a way of being done.Six herons standing quietly in a pool of water,or you, naked, walking out of the bathroom without seeing me.

I kept telling myself that all the women in the world weren´t whores, just mine.

I was like a turd that drew flies instead of like a flower that butterflies and bees desired. I wanted to live alone,I felt best being alone, cleaner,,,

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.