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Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Books

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“Nothing was ever in tune. People just blindly grabbed at whatever there was: communism, health foods, zen, surfing, ballet, hypnotism, group encounters, orgies, biking, herbs, Catholicism, weight-lifting, travel, withdrawal, vegetarianism, India, painting, writing, sculpting, composing, conducting, backpacking, yoga, copulating, gambling, drinking, hanging around, frozen yogurt, Beethoven, Back, Buddha, Christ, TM, H, carrot juice, suicide, handmade suits, jet travel, New York City, and then it all evaporated and fell apart. People had to find things to do while waiting to die. I guess it was nice to have a choice.”

HumansPhilosophySociety
Book:Women
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“The dead do not need aspirin or sorrow, I suppose. but they might need rain. not shoes but a place to walk. not cigarettes, they tell us, but a place to burn. or we're told: space and a place to fly might be the same. the dead don't need me. nor do the living. but the dead might need each other. in fact, the dead might need everything we need and we need so much if we only knew what it was. it is probably everything and we will all probably die trying to get it or die because we don't get it. I hope you will understand when I am dead I got as much as possible.”

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Book:The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966
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“I could see the road ahead of me. I was poor and I was going to stay poor. But I didn't particularly want money. I didn't know what I wanted. Yes, I did. I wanted someplace to hide out, someplace where one didn't have to do anything. The thought of being something didn't only appall me, it sickened me. The thought of being a lawyer or a councilman or an engineer, anything like that, seemed impossible to me. To get married, to have children, to get trapped in the family structure. To go someplace to work every day and to return. It was impossible. To do things, simple things, to be part of family picnics, Christmas, the 4th of July, Labor, Mother's Day . . . was a man born just to endure those things and then die? I would rather be a dishwasher, return alone to a tiny room and drink myself to sleep. My father had a master plan. He told me, "My son, each man during his lifetime should buy a house. Finally he dies and leaves that house to his son. Then his son gets his own house and dies, leaves both houses to his son. That's two houses. That son gets his own house, that's three houses . . ." The family structure. Victory over adversity through the family. He believed in it. Take the family, mix with God and Country, add the ten-hour day and you had what was needed. I looked at my father, at his hands, his face, his eyebrows, and I knew that this man had nothing to do with me. He was a stranger. My mother was non-existent. I was cursed. Looking at my father I saw nothing but indecent dullness. Worse, he was even more afraid to fail than most others. Centuries of peasant blood and peasant training. The Chinaski bloodline had been thinned by a series of peasant-servants who had surrendered their real lives for fractional and illusionary gains. Not a man in line who said, "I don't want a house, I want a thousand houses, now!" He had sent me to that rich high school hoping that the ruler's attitude would rub off on me as I watched the rich boys screech up in their cream-colored coupes and pick up the girls in bright dresses. Instead I learned that the poor usually stay poor. That the young rich smell the stink of the poor and learn to find it a bit amusing. They had to laugh, otherwise it would be too terrifying. They'd learned that, through the centuries. I would never forgive the girls for getting into those cream-colored coupes with the laughing boys. They couldn't help it, of course, yet you always think, maybe . . . But no, there weren't any maybes. Wealth meant victory and victory was the only reality. What woman chooses to live with a dishwasher?”

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Book:Ham On Rye
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“The time came to put Iris Duarte back on the plane. It was a morning flight which made it difficult. I was used to rising at noon; it was a fine cure for hangovers and would add 5 years to my life. I felt no sadness while driving her to L.A. International. The sex had been fine; there had been laughter. I could hardly remember a more civilized time, neither of us making any demands, yet there had been warmth, it had not been without feeling, dead meat coupled with dead meat. I detested that type of swinging, the Los Angeles, Hollywood, Bel Air, Malibu, Laguna Beach kind of sex. Strangers when you meet, strangers when you part—a gymnasium of bodies namelessly masturbating each other. People with no morals often considered themselves more free, but mostly they lacked the ability to feel or to love. So they became swingers. The dead fucking the dead. There was no gamble or humor in their game—it was corpse fucking corpse. Morals were restrictive, but they were grounded on human experience down through the centuries. Some morals tended to keep people slaves in factories, in churches and true to the State. Other morals simply made good sense. It was like a garden filled with poisoned fruit and good fruit. You had to know which to pick and eat, which to leave alone.”

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Book:Women
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“I got to my place late one night. I was really beat. Getting that key out and into the door was about the last of me. I walked into the bedroom and there was Fay in bed reading the New Yorker and eating chocolates. She didn't even say hello. I walked into the kitchen and looked for something to eat. There was nothing in the refrigerator. I decided to pour myself a glass of water. I walked to the sink. It was stopped-up with garbage. Fay liked to save empty jars and jar lids. The dirty dishes filled half the sink and on top of the water, along with a few paper plates, floated these jars and jar lids. I walked back into the bedroom just as Fay was putting a chocolate in her mouth. "Look, Fay," I said, "I know you want to save the world. But can't you start in the kitchen ?" "Kitchens aren't important," she said.”

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Book:Post Office
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“I can't have it and you can't have it and we won't get it so don't bet on it or even think about it just get out of bed each morning wash shave clothe yourself and go out into it because outside of that all that's left is suicide and madness so you just can't expect too much you can't even expect so what you do is work from a modest minimal base like when you walk outside be glad your car might possibly be there and if it is- that the tires aren't flat then you get in and if it starts—you start. and it's the damndest movie you've ever seen because you're in it— low budget and 4 billion critics and the longest run you ever hope for is one day.”

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Author:Charles Bukowski
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“we had the goldfish and they went around and around in the bowl on the table near the purple drapes across our front picture window and my mother, poor fish, always smiling, wanting to appear happy, she always told me, "be happy, Henry," and she was right: it's better to be happy if you can be but my father beat her two or three times a week while raging through his 6 foot two frame because he couldn't defeat what was attacking him. my mother, poor fish, poor goldfish, poor nothing fish, wanting to be happy, being beaten two or three times a week and telling me to be happy: "Henry, smile! why don't you smile? and then, she always did to show me how, and it was the saddest smile I ever saw upon the earth, like hell and hell and hell and hell, and nothing else one day all the goldfish died, all five of them, they floated on top of the water, on their sides, the eye on each top side still open, and when my father got home he threw them to the cat there on the kitchen floor and we watched as my mother smiled”

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Author:Charles Bukowski
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“There’s never any escape from anything at all. You’re always going to be burned. There is never any pleasantness, easiness anywhere. You’ll be burned down to the grave. No matter how much you know, no matter how much you feel, you’re going to be burned, burned, burned till the last minute you breathe. When you open a cap on a mustard jar, you’re gonna be burned. If you open up a can of cat food, you’re gonna be burned. Everything is burning. All you’re trying to do is walk across a room and drink a glass of water and take it easy. There’s always things burning, ripping at you. It’s the whole universe. It’s everything. Women, men, friends, everything. Rips and tears, man. Rips and tears.”

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Author:Charles Bukowski
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“I like to prowl ordinary places. I feel sorry for us all or glad for us all caught alive together and awkward in that way. there's nothing better than the joke of us the seriousness of us the dullness of us”

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Book:Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit
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“All right, God, say that You are really there. You have put me in this fix. You want to test me. Suppose I test You? Suppose I say that You are not there? You've given me a supreme test with my parents and with these boils. I think that I have passed Your test. I am tougher than You. If You will come down here right now, I will spit into Your face, if You have a face. And do You shit? The priest never answered that question. He told us not to doubt. Doubt what? I think that You have been picking on me too much so I am asking You to come down here so I can put You to the test! I waited. Nothing. I waited for God. I waited and waited. I believe I slept.”

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Book:Ham On Rye
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