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Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Quotes

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Famous Charles Bukowski Quotes

“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 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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“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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“when we were kids laying around the lawn on our bellies we often talked about how we'd like to die and we all agreed on the same thing; we'd all like to die fucking (although none of us had done any fucking) and now that we are hardly kids any longer we think more about how not to die and although we're ready most of us would prefer to do it alone under the sheets now that most of us have fucked our lives away.”

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Book:You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense
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“darkness falls upon Humanity and faces become terrible things that wanted more than there was. all our days are marked with unexpected affronts - some disastrous, others less so but the process is wearing and continuous. attrition rules. most give way leaving empty spaces where people should be. and now as we ready to self-destruct there is very little left to kill which makes the tragedy less and more much much more.”

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Book:You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense
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“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 lucky minutes here or maybe an hour there. something is working toward you right now, and I mean you and nobody but you.”

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Book:You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense
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“it is so dark now with the sadness of people they were tricked, they were taught to expect the ultimate when nothing is promised now young girls weep alone in small rooms old men angrily swing their canes at visions as ladies comb their hair as ants search for survival history surrounds us and our lives slink away in shame.”

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Book:You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense
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“I killed four flies while waiting. Damn, death was everywhere. Man, bird, beast, reptile, rodent, insect, fish didn't have a chance. The fix was in. I didn't know what to do about it. I got depressed. You know, I see a boy at the supermarket, he's packing my groceries, then I see him sticking himself into his own grave along with the toilet paper, the beer and the chicken breasts.”

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Book:Pulp: Charles Bukowski's Final Hardboiled Noir Comedy – Lady Death, Aliens, and the Absurd
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“shot in the eye shot in the brain shot in the ass shot like a flower in the dance amazing how death wins hands down amazing how much credence is given to idiot forms of life amazing how laughter has been drowned out amazing how viciousness is such a constant I must soon declare my own war on their war I must hold to my last piece of ground I must protect the small space I have made that has allowed me life my life not their death my death not their death this place, this time, now I vow to the sun that I will laugh the good laugh once again in the perfect place of me forever. their death not my life.”

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Book:Betting on the Muse: Poems & Stories
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“we are burning like a chicken wing left on the grill of an outdoor barbecue we are unwanted and burning we are burning and unwanted we are an unwanted burning as we sizzle and fry to the bone the coals of Dante's 'Inferno' spit and sputter beneath us and above the sky is an open hand and the words of wise men are useless it's not a nice world, a nice world it's not ...”

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Book:You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense
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“There's nothing to mourn about death any more than there is to mourn about the growing of a flower. What is terrible is not death but the lives people live or don't live up until their death. They don't honor their own lives ... their minds are full of cotton. They swallow God without thinking, they swallow country without thinking. Soon they forget how to think, they let others think for them.... Most people's deaths are a sham. There's nothing left to die.”

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Author:Charles Bukowski
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