I don’t like the clean-shaven boy with the necktie and the good job. I like desperate men, men with broken teeth and broken minds and broken ways. They interest me. They are full of surprises and explosions. – Charles Bukowski
I kept writing not because I felt I was so good, but because I felt they were so bad, including Shakespeare, all those. The stilted formalism, like chewing cardboard. – Charles Bukowski
I used to live on one candy bar a day – it cost a nickel. I always remember the candy bar was called Payday. That was my payday. And that candy bar tasted so good, at night I would take one bite, and it was so beautiful. – Charles Bukowski
A cat is only itself, representative of the strong forces of life that won’t let go. – Charles Bukowski
We’re all going to die, all of us; what a circus! That alone should make us love each other, but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities. We are eaten up by nothing. – Charles Bukowski
The female loves to play man against man. And if she is in a position to do it, there is not one who will resist. – Charles Bukowski
We have wasted History like a bunch of drunks shooting dice back in the men’s crapper of the local bar. – Charles Bukowski
The male, for all his bravado and exploration, is the loyal one, the one who generally feels love. The female is skilled at betrayal and torture and damnation. – Charles Bukowski
When I say that basically writing is a hard hustle, I don’t mean that it is a bad life, if one can get away with it. It’s the miracle of miracles to make a living by the typer. – Charles Bukowski
An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way. – Charles Bukowski
There will always be something to ruin our lives, it all depends on what or which finds us first. We are always ripe and ready to be taken. – Charles Bukowski
The free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it – basically because you feel good, very good, when you are near or with them. – Charles Bukowski
My love is a hummingbird sitting that quiet moment on the bough, as the same cat crouches. – Charles Bukowski
When I write, when I’m going hot, I don’t want to write more than four hours in a row. After that, you’re pushing it. – Charles Bukowski
If you’re losing your soul and you know it, then you’ve still got a soul left to lose. – Charles Bukowski
There are women who can make you feel more with their bodies and their souls, but these are the exact women who will turn the knife into you right in front of the crowd. Of course, I expect this, but the knife still cuts. – Charles Bukowski
Even though I write about the human race, the further away from them, the better I feel. Two miles is great; two thousand miles is beautiful. – Charles Bukowski
Writers have to put up with this editor thing; it is ageless and eternal and wrong. – Charles Bukowski
