Charles Bukowski Quotes That Will Inspire You to Live Your Best Life

1. (the whole world is at thethroat of the world,everybody feels angry,short-changed, cheated,everybody is despondent,disillusioned.)I welcomed shots of peace, tattered shards ofhappiness. Betting on the Muse: Poems and Stories

2. After dinner or lunch or whatever it was -- with my crazy 12-hour night I was no longer sure what was what -- I said, "Look, baby, I'm sorry, but don't you realize that this job is driving me crazy? Look, let's give it up. Let's just lay around and make love and take walks and talk a little. Let's go to the zoo. Let's look at animals. Let's drive down and look at the ocean. It's only 45 minutes. Let's play games in the arcades. Let's go to the races, the Art Museum, the boxing matches. Let's have friends. Let's laugh. This kind of life like everybody else's kind of life: it's killing us. Post Office

3. alone with everybodythe flesh covers the boneand they put a mindin there andsometimes a soul,and the women breakvases against the wallsand them men drink toomuchand nobody finds theonebut they keeplookingcrawling in and outof beds.flesh coversthe bone and theflesh searchesfor more thanflesh.there's no chanceat all:we are all trappedby a singularfate.nobody ever findsthe one.the city dumps fillthe junkyards fillthe madhouses fillthe hospitals fillthe graveyards fillnothing elsefills. Love Is a Dog from Hell

4. and our few good times will be rare because we have the critical senseand are not easy to fool with laughter

5. and when love came to us twice and lied to us twice we decided to never love again that was fair fair to us and fair to love itself. we ask for no mercy or no miracles; we are strong enough to live and to die and to kill flies, attend the boxing matches, go to the racetrack, live on luck and skill, get alone, get alone often, and if you can't sleep alone be careful of the words you speak in your sleep; and ask for no mercy no miracles; and don't forget: time is meant to be wasted, love failsand death is useless. What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire

6. Beasts bounding through time. Van Gogh writing his brother for paintsHemingway testing his shotgunCeline going broke as a doctor of medicinethe impossibility of being humanVillon expelled from Paris for being a thiefFaulkner drunk in the gutters of his townthe impossibility of being humanBurroughs killing his wife with a gunMailer stabbing histhe impossibility of being humanMaupassant going mad in a rowboatDostoevsky lined up against a wall to be shotCrane off the back of a boat into the propellerthe impossibilitySylvia with her head in the oven like a baked potatoHarry Crosby leaping into that Black SunLorca murdered in the road by the Spanish troopsthe impossibilityArtaud sitting on a madhouse benchChatterton drinking rat poisonShakespeare a plagiaristBeethoven with a horn stuck into his head against deafnessthe impossibility the impossibilityNietzsche gone totally madthe impossibility of being humanall too humanthis breathingin and outout and inthese punksthese cowardsthese championsthese mad dogs of glorymoving this little bit of light towardusimpossibly You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense

7. Find what you love and let it kill you.

8. Having a bunch of cats around is good. If you're feeling bad, just look at the cats, you'll feel better, because they know that everything is, just as it is. On Cats

9. having nothing to struggleagainstthey have nothing to strugglefor. You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense

10. I drive around the streetsan inch away from weeping,ashamed of my sentimentality andpossible love. Love Is a Dog from Hell

11. I loved you like a man loves a woman he never touches, only writes to, keeps little photographs of. Love Is a Dog from Hell

12. I was glad I wasn't in love, that I wasn't happy with the world. I like being at odds with everything. People in love often become edgy, dangerous. They lose their sense of perspective. They lose their sense of humor. They become nervous, psychotic bores. They even become killers. Women

13. If I never see you again I will always carry youinsideoutsideon my fingertipsand at brain edgesand in centerscentersof what I am ofwhat remains. Living on Luck

14. it's good to have things done withwhen they don't workit's also good not to hateor even forgetthe person you've failed with. Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit

15. Life's as kind as you let it be. Hot Water Music

16. Love is a form of prejudice. You love what you need, you love what makes you feel good, you love what is convenient. How can you say you love one person when there are ten thousand people in the world that you would love more if you ever met them? But you'll never meet them. All right, so we do the best we can. Granted. But we must still realize that love is just the result of a chance encounter. Most people make too much of it. On these grounds a good fuck is not to be entirely scorned. But that's the result of a chance meeting too. You're damned right. Drink up. We'll have another.

17. My Dear,Find what you love and let it kill you. Let it drain you of your all. Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness. Let it kill you and let it devour your remains. For all things will kill you, both slowly and fastly, but it's much better to be killed by a lover.-Falsely yours

18. my mother, poor fish,wanting to be happy, beaten two or three times aweek, telling me to be happy: "Henry, smile!why don't you ever smile?"and then she would smile, to show me how, and it was thesaddest smile I ever saw

19. People don't need love. What they need is success in one form or another. It can be love but it needn't be. Factotum

20. regret is mostly caused by not havingdone anything. You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense

21. regret is mostly caused by not havingdone anything. You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense

22. she slammed the door andwas gone.I looked at the closed doorand at the doorknoband strangelyI didn't feelalone. You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense

23. She's mad, but she's magic. There's no lie in her fire.

24. some moments are nice, some arenicer, some are even worthwritingabout. War All the Time

25. Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.

26. Sometimes you just have to pee in the sink.

27. the gods play nofavorites. You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense

28. the worst thing," he told me,"is bitterness, people end up sobitter. You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense

29. To me, nudity is a joke. I don't think nude people are very attractive at all. I like my women fully clothed. I like to imagine what might be under there. It might not be the standard thing. Imagine, stripping a woman down, and she has a body like a little submarine. With periscope, propellers, torpedoes. That would be the one for me. I'd marry her right off and be faithful to the end.

30. Turgenev was a very serious fellow but he could make me laugh because a truth first encountered can be very funny. When someone else's truth is the same as your truth, and he seems to be saying it just for you, that's great. Ham on Rye