Charles Bukowski

“Poetry is what happens when nothing else can.”

“when I am feeling low all i have to do is watch my cats and my courage returns”

“I often stood in front of the mirror alone, wondering how ugly a person could get.”

“sometimes when everything seems at its worst when all conspires and gnaws and the hours, days, weeks years seem wasted – stretched there upon my bed in the dark looking upward at the ceiling...”

“Most people are much better at saying things in letters than in conversation, and some people can write artistic, inventive letters, but when they try a poem or story or novel they become pr...”

“the best part was pulling down the shades stuffing the doorbell with rags putting the phone in the refrigerator and going to bed for 3 or 4 days. and the next best part was nobody ever misse...”

“as long as there are human beings about there is never going to be any peace for any individual upon this earth (or anywhere else they might escape to). all you can do is maybe grab ten luck...”

“we must bring our own light to the darkness.”

“I see a bright portion under the overhead light that shades into darkness and then into darker darkness and I can't see beyond that.”

“there are so many days when living stops and pulls up and sits and waits like a train on the rails.”

“I do think that poetry is important though, if you don’t strive at it, if you don’t fill it full of stars and falseness.”

“And then she would smile, to show me how, and it was the saddest smile I ever saw.”

“it's so easy to be a poet and so hard to be a man.”

“during my worst times on the park benches in the jails or living with whores I always had this certain contentment- I wouldn't call it happiness- it was more of an inner balance that settled...”

“I wait on my fix: I am a poetry junkie.”

“If I bet on humanity, I'd never cash a ticket.”

“where some god pissed a rain of reason to make things grow only to die,”

“that your power of command with simple language was one of the magnificent things of our century. (from the poem: result)”

“Born into this Into hospitals which are so expensive that it's cheaper to die Into lawyers who charge so much it's cheaper to plead guilty Into a country where the jails are full and the mad...”

“I care for you, darling, I love you, the only reason I fucked L. is because you fucked Z. and then I fucked R. and you fucked N. and because you fucked N. I had to fuck Y. But I think of you...”