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Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Quotes

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Famous Charles Bukowski Quotes

“There may not be a hell, but those who judge may create one. I think people are over-taught. They are over-taught everything. You have to find out by what happens to you, how you will react. I'll have to use a strange term here... "good." I don't know where it comes from, but I feel that there's an ultimate strain of goodness born in each of us. I don't believe in God, but I believe in this "goodness" like a tube running through our bodies. It can be nurtured. It's always magic, when on a freeway packed with traffic, a stranger makes room for you to change lanes... it gives you hope.”

PeopleThinkingKnowsGivingFeelsBelieveMayUseBodyHappensRunningI BelieveTermBornRoomsHellMagicTaughtStrangeJudgingGoodnessUltimateDon't BelieveI Believe InStrangerBelieve In GodTrafficStrainLanesTubesFreewaysThose Who Judge
Author:Charles Bukowski
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“there's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I'm too clever, I only let him out at night sometimes when everybody's asleep. I say, I know that you're there, so don't be sad. then I put him back, but he's singing a little in there, I haven't quite let him die and we sleep together like that with our secret pact and it's nice enough to make a man weep, but I don't weep, do you?”

KnowsMenWantHeartLittlesSometimesEnoughTogetherNightDiesSleepSecretNiceHavensMy HeartSingingCleverPactBluebirdDon't Be Sad
Book:On Love
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“Pain is strange. A cat killing a bird, a car accident, a fire.... Pain arrives, BANG, and there it is, it sits on you. It's real. And to anybody watching, you look foolish. Like you've suddenly become an idiot. There's no cure for it unless you know somebody who understands how you feel, and knows how to help.”

KnowsFeelsLooksRealHelpingPainKnow HowFireCarStrangeLike YouBirdCatKillingAccidentsFoolishCuresIdiotBangsHow You FeelCar Accident
Book:Women
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“you've got to burn straight up and down and then maybe sidewise for a while and have your guts scrambled by a bully and the demonic ladies, you've got to run along the edge of madness teetering, you've got to starve like a winter alleycat, you've go to live with the imbecility of at least a dozen cities, then maybe maybe maybe you might know where you are for a tiny blinking moment.”

KnowsMomentsMightRunningCitiesMadnessDown AndWinterEdgesTinyGutsWhere You AreDozenBullyUp And DownDemonicStraight UpImbecility
Author:Charles Bukowski
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“Pull a string, a puppet moves ... each man must realize that it can all disappear very quickly: the cat, the woman, the job, the front tire, the bed, the walls, the room; all our necessities including love, rest on foundations of sand - and any given cause, no matter how unrelated: the death of a boy in Hong Kong or a blizzard in Omaha ... can serve as your undoing. all your chinaware crashing to the kitchen floor, your girl will enter and you'll be standing, drunk, in the center of it and she'll ask: my god, what's the matter? and you'll answer: I don't know, I don't know.”

KnowsMenMatterJobsMovingGirlAsksGivenCausesRealizingAnswersRoomsBoysFrontsWallBedStandingCatFoundationIncludingDisappearDrunkKitchenSandStringsTirePuppetsHong KongUndoingBlizzardOmaha
Author:Charles Bukowski
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“I like to change liquor stores frequently because the clerks got to know your habits if you went in night and day and bought huge quantities. I could feel them wondering why I wasn't dead yet and it made me uncomfortable. They probably weren't thinking any such thing, but then a man gets paranoid when he has 300 hangovers a year.”

IfsThinkingKnowsMenFeelsYearsMadeNightWonderHugeHabitDrinkingStoresUncomfortableQuantityLiquorParanoidHangoverClerksLiquor Stores
Author:Charles Bukowski
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“That moment - to this ... may be years in the way they measure, but it's only one sentence back in my mind - there are so many days when living stops and pulls up and sits and waits like a train on the rails. I pass the hotel at 8 and at 5; there are cats in the alleys and bottles and bums, and I look up at the window and think, I no longer know where you are, and I walk on and wonder where the living goes when it stops.”

ThinkingKnowsWayYearsMindLooksMayMomentsWaitingWalksWonderCatWindowTrainSentencesLook UpHotelThat MomentWhere You AreBottlesRailAlleysOne SentencePull UpsBack Alleys
Book:On Love
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“Writing is something that you don't know how to do. You sit down and it's something that happens, or it may not happen. So, how can you teach anybody how to write? It's beyond me, because you yourself don't even know if you're going to be able to. I'm always worried, well, you know, every time I go upstairs with my wine bottle. Sometimes I'll sit at that typewriter for fifteen minutes, you know. I don't go up there to write. The typewriter's up there. If it doesn't start moving, I say, well this could be the night that I hit the dust.”

IfsKnowsWritingWellsMaySometimesHappensAbleMovingNightFearTeachKnow HowMinutesDown AndWineDustWorriedBottlesFifteenTypewritersWriter's BlockUpstairs
Author:Charles Bukowski
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“The Laughing Heart your life is your life don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission. be on the watch. there are ways out. there is a light somewhere. it may not be much light but it beats the darkness. be on the watch. the gods will offer you chances. know them. take them. you can’t beat death but you can beat death in life, sometimes. and the more often you learn to do it, the more light there will be. your life is your life. know it while you have it. you are marvelous the gods wait to delight in you.”

KnowsWayHeartMaySometimesLightLife IsWaitingChanceWatchesDarknessLaughingOffersBeatsDelightGods WillMarvelousSubmissionDankLevi's
Author:Charles Bukowski
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“This is a world where everybody’s gotta do something. Ya know, somebody laid down this rule that everybody’s gotta do something, they gotta be something. You know, a dentist, a glider pilot, a narc, a janitor, a preacher, all that . . . Sometimes I just get tired of thinking of all the things that I don’t wanna do. All the things that I don’t wanna be. Places I don’t wanna go, like India, like getting my teeth cleaned. Save the whale, all that, I don’t understand that . . .”

ThinkingKnowsWorldSometimesIndiaTiredTeethPilotsPreacherWhalesDentistJanitor
Author:Charles Bukowski
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“Christmas poem to a man in jail hello Bill Abbott: I appreciate your passing around my books in jail there, my poems and stories. if I can lighten the load for some of those guys with my books, fine. but literature, you know, is difficult for the average man to assimilate (and for the unaverage man too); I don't like most poetry, for example, so I write mine the way I like to read it.”

IfsKnowsMenWayWritingI CanBookStoriesGuyLiteratureDifficultExampleMinesFineAppreciateBillsAveragePassingPassingsJailLoadHelloAverage Man
Author:Charles Bukowski
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“You know the typical crowd, Wow, it’s Friday night, what are you going to do? Just sit there? Well, yeah. Because there’s nothing out there. It’s stupidity. Stupid people mingling with stupid people. Let them stupidify themselves. I’ve never been bothered with the need to rush out into the night. That’s all. Sorry for all the millions, but I’ve never been lonely. I like myself. I’m the best form of entertainment I have.”

PeopleKnowsNeedsWritingWellsFormNightMillionsStupidLonelyYeahSorryCrowdsEntertainmentStupidityWowTypicalFridayBotheredStupid PeopleFriday NightMingling
Book:Sunlight Here I Am: Interviews and Encounters, 1963-1993
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