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Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Quotes

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Famous Charles Bukowski Quotes

“There's no light at the end of the tunnel, there isn't even a tunnel. The best thing I can do is get drunk and listen to classical music. Or sleep and wait for death to get closer. Leaving this will not be a horrible thing. Yet I'm glad, somehow, that I threw my words in the air: confetti, celebrating nothing.”

I CanEndsLightWaitingCan DoSleepAirLeavingGladHorribleDrunkCelebrateBest ThingsClassical MusicTunnelsHorrible ThingsLight At The End Of The TunnelEnd Of The TunnelConfetti
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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“in the cupboard sits my bottle like a dwarf waiting to scratch out my prayers. I drink and cough like some idiot at a symphony, sunlight and maddened birds are everywhere, the phone rings gamboling its sound against the odds of the crooked sea; I drink deeply and evenly now, I drink to paradise and death and the lie of love.”

LyingWaitingSoundPrayerSeaDrinkBirdDrinkingPhonesRingsIdiotParadiseBottlesSunlightOddsScratchesSymphonyCrookedDwarfsDwarvesCupboardsAgainst The Odds
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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“Somebody at one of these places asked me: "What do you do? How do you write, create?" You don't, I told them. You "don't try". That's very important: not to try, either for Cadillacs, creation or immortality. You wait, and if nothing happens, you wait some more. It's like a bug high on the wall. You wait for it to come to you. When it gets close enough you reach out, slap out and kill it. Or if you like it's looks, you make a pet out of it.”

IfsWritingTryingLooksImportantEnoughHappensWaitingCreationWallImmortalityPetReach OutBugsSlapYou Like ItCadillacs
Author:Charles Bukowski
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“The street to my left was backed up with traffic and I watched the people waiting patiently in the cars. There was almost always a man and a women, staring straight ahead, not talking. It was, finally, for everyone, a matter of waiting. You waited and you waited- for the hospital, the doctor, the plumber, the madhouse, the jail, papa death himself. First the signal red, then the signal was green. The citizens of the world ate food and watched t.v. and worried about their jobs or lack of the same, while they waited.”

PeopleMenWorldFirstsMatterJobsLeftWaitingTalkingStreetsCarCitizensRedDoctorsGreenWorriedStaringHospitalsJailTrafficSignalsNot TalkingPapaPlumberMadhouses
Author:Charles Bukowski
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“little sun little moon little dog and a little to eat and a little to love and a little to live for in a little room filled with little mice who gnaw and dance and run while I sleep waiting for a little death in the middle of a little morning in a little city in a little state my little mother dead my little father dead in a little cemetery somewhere. I have only a little time to tell you this: watch out for little death when he comes running but like all the billions of little deaths it will finally mean nothing and everything: all your little tears burning like the dove, wasted.”

MeanLittlesStatesRunningMotherFatherWaitingSleepRoomsCitiesWatchesMorningSunMiddleDogTearsMoonFilledBillionsBurningMiceDoveCemeteryLittle Time
Book:sifting through the madness for the word, the line, the way: New Poems
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