This Week with Charles Bukowski

“If you're losing your soul and you know it, then you've still got a soul left to lose”
? Charles Bukowski

“what matters most is how well you walk through the fire”
? Charles Bukowski

“Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I'm not going to make it, but you laugh inside — remembering all the times you've felt that way.”
? Charles Bukowski

“People with no morals often considered themselves more free, but mostly they lacked the ability to feel or love.”
? Charles Bukowski, Women

“Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.”
? Charles Bukowski

“Some lose all mind and become soul,insane.
some lose all soul and become mind, intellectual.
some lose both and become accepted”
? Charles Bukowski

“This is very important — to take leisure time. Pace is the essence. Without stopping entirely and doing nothing at all for great periods, you're gonna lose everything…just to do nothing at all, very, very important. And how many people do this in modern society? Very few. That's why they're all totally mad, frustrated, angry and hateful.”
? Charles Bukowski

“For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.”
? Charles Bukowski

“You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.”
? Charles Bukowski, Women

“That's the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.”
? Charles Bukowski, Women

“Great art is horseshit, buy tacos.”
? Charles Bukowski

“My ambition is handicapped by laziness”
? Charles Bukowski, Factotum

“We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.”
? Charles Bukowski

“If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery–isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is.”
? Charles Bukowski, Factotum

“You have to die a few times before you can really
live.”
? Charles Bukowski, The People Look Like Flowers at Last

“there are worse things
than being alone
but it often takes
decades to realize this
and most often when you do
it's too late
and there's nothing worse
than too late”
? Charles Bukowski

“An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.”
? Charles Bukowski

“I've never been lonely. I've been in a room — I've felt suicidal. I've been depressed. I've felt awful — awful beyond all — but I never felt that one other person could enter that room and cure what was bothering me…or that any number of people could enter that room. In other words, loneliness is something I've never been bothered with because I've always had this terrible itch for solitude. It's being at a party, or at a stadium full of people cheering for something, that I might feel loneliness. I'll quote Ibsen, "The strongest men are the most alone." I've never thought, "Well, some beautiful blonde will come in here and give me a fuck-job, rub my balls, and I'll feel good." No, that won't help. 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. I hid in bars, because I didn't want to hide in factories. 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. Let's drink more wine!”
? Charles Bukowski

“Boring damned people. All over the earth. Propagating more boring damned people. What a horror show. The earth swarmed with them.”
? Charles Bukowski
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“I loved you like a man loves a woman he never touches, only writes to, keeps little photographs of.”
? Charles Bukowski, Love is a Dog from Hell

“There's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going to let anybody see you.”
? Charles Bukowski

“Sometimes you just have to pee in the sink.”
? Charles Bukowski

“I don't hate people. I just feel better when they aren't around.”
? Charles Bukowski

“I wanted the whole world or nothing.”
? Charles Bukowski, Post Office

“Drinking is an emotional thing. It joggles you out of the standardism of everyday life, out of everything being the same. It yanks you out of your body and your mind and throws you against the wall. I have the feeling that drinking is a form of suicide where you're allowed to return to life and begin all over the next day. It's like killing yourself, and then you're reborn. I guess I've lived about ten or fifteen thousand lives now.”
? Charles Bukowski

“those who escape hell
however
never talk about
it
and nothing much
bothers them
after
that.”
? Charles Bukowski

“Sex is kicking death in the ass while singing.”
? Charles Bukowski

“A love like that was a serious illness, an illness from which you never entirely recover.”
? Charles Bukowski, The People Look Like Flowers at Last

“you boys can keep your virgins
give me hot old women in high heels
with asses that forgot to get old. ”
? Charles Bukowski, Love is a Dog from Hell

“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.”
? Charles Bukowski, Women

“We are
Born like this
Into this
Into these carefully mad wars
Into the sight of broken factory windows of emptiness
Into bars where people no longer speak to each other
Into fist fights that end as shootings and knifings
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 madhouses closed
Into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes”
? Charles Bukowski

“the free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it – basically because you feel good, very good, when you are near or with them.”
? Charles Bukowski, Tales of Ordinary Madness

“It was true that I didn’t have much ambition, but there ought to be a place for people without ambition, I mean a better place than the one usually reserved. How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?”
? Charles Bukowski, Factotum

“my beerdrunk soul is sadder than all the dead christmas trees of the world.”
? Charles Bukowski

“The shortest distance between two points is often unbearable.”
? Charles Bukowski

“Poetry is what happens when nothing else can.”
? Charles Bukowski

“We are like roses that have never bothered to bloom when we should have bloomed and it is as if the sun has become disgusted with waiting”
? Charles Bukowski

“Of course it's possible to love a human being if you don't know them too well.”
? Charles Bukowski

“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, they piss on their lives. They shit them away. Dumb fuckers. They concentrate too much on fucking, movies, money, family, fucking. 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. Their brains are stuffed with cotton. They look ugly, they talk ugly, they walk ugly. Play them the great music of the centuries and they can't hear it. Most people's deaths are a sham. There's nothing left to die.”
? Charles Bukowski

“Life's as kind as you let it be.”
? Charles Bukowski, Hot Water Music

“Baby," I said, "I'm a genius but nobody knows it but me.”
? Charles Bukowski, Factotum

With thanks to Charles and to GoodReads.com for getting me through today.
Love and love always.
xx