Charles Bukowski

all theorieslike clichesshot to hell,all these small faceslooking upbeautiful and believing;I wish to weepbut sorrow isstupid.I wish to believe but believe is agraveyard. we have narrowed it down tothe butcherknife and themockingbird wish usluck.

unaccountably we are aloneforever aloneand it was meant to bethat way,it was never meantto be any other way__nd when the death strugglebeginsthe last thing I wish to seeisa ring of human faceshovering over me__etter just my old friends,the walls of my self,let only them be there.I have been alone but seldomlonely.I have satisfied my thirstat the wellof my selfand that wine was good,the best I ever had,and tonightsittingstaring into the darkI now finally understandthe dark and thelight and everythingin between.peace of mind and heartarriveswhen we accept whatis:having beenborn into thisstrange lifewe must acceptthe wasted gamble of ourdaysand take some satisfaction inthe pleasure ofleaving it allbehind.cry not for me.grieve not for me.readwhat I__e writtenthenforget itall.drink from the wellof your selfand beginagain.Mind and Heart

Turgenev was a very serious fellow but he could make me laugh because a truth first encountered can be very funny. When someone else's truth is the same as your truth, and he seems to be saying it just for you, that's great.

Beasts bounding through time. Van Gogh writing his brother for paintsHemingway testing his shotgunCeline going broke as a doctor of medicinethe impossibility of being humanVillon expelled from Paris for being a thiefFaulkner drunk in the gutters of his townthe impossibility of being humanBurroughs killing his wife with a gunMailer stabbing histhe impossibility of being humanMaupassant going mad in a rowboatDostoevsky lined up against a wall to be shotCrane off the back of a boat into the propellerthe impossibilitySylvia with her head in the oven like a baked potatoHarry Crosby leaping into that Black SunLorca murdered in the road by the Spanish troopsthe impossibilityArtaud sitting on a madhouse benchChatterton drinking rat poisonShakespeare a plagiaristBeethoven with a horn stuck into his head against deafnessthe impossibility the impossibilityNietzsche gone totally madthe impossibility of being humanall too humanthis breathingin and outout and inthese punksthese cowardsthese championsthese mad dogs of glorymoving this little bit of light towardusimpossibly

The good times were over. Nobody gave a shit and nobody had any money and if they had any, they kept it.

I tell you such fine music waits in the shadows of hell.

Music is much like fucking, but some composers can't climax and others climax too often, leaving themselves and the listener jaded and spent.

Ya got cigarettes?_ she asks. __es,_ I say,__ got cigarettes._ __atches?_ she asks.__nough to burn Rome._ __hiskey?___nough whiskey for a Mississippi River of pain._ __ou drunk?_ __ot yet.

that's ONE thing that's wrong with intellectuals and writers - they don't feel a hell of a lot except their own comfort or their own pain. which is normal but shitty.

my gardenin the sun and in the rainand in the day and in the nightpain is a flowerpain is flowersblooming all the time.

you shoulda known the entirety of the trap, a**hole,love means eventual painvictory means eventual defeatgrace means eventual slovenliness,there's no wayout...you see, youunderstand?

To experience real agony is something hard to write about, impossible to understand while it grips you; you're frightened out of your wits, can__ sit still, move, or even go decently insane.

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.

She's mad, but she's magic. There's no lie in her fire.

the first place smelled like work, so I took the second

That__ when I first learned that it wasn__ enough to just do your job, you had to have an interest in it, even a passion for it.

The total ugliness and indifference of the worst features of the human race come out in their driving habits.

I sat back down and poured a glass of wine. I left my door open. The moonlight came in with the sounds of the city: juke boxes, automobiles, curses, dogs barking, radios . . . We were all in it together. We were all in one big shit pot together. There was no escape. We were all going to be flushed away.