Charles Bukowski
Charles Bukowski
Henry Charles Bukowskiwas an American poet, novelist, and short story writer...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth16 August 1920
CityAndernach, Germany
CountryUnited States of America
wall heart fighting
I was fighting a small fight of my own which wasn't leading anywhere-but like a man with a bent spoon trying to dig through a cement wall I knew that a small fight was better than quitting: it kept the heart alive.
suicide wall drinking
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.
wall fate men
alone with everybody the flesh covers the bone and they put a mind in there and sometimes a soul, and the women break vases against the walls and them men drink too much and nobody finds the one but they keep looking crawling in and out of beds. flesh covers the bone and the flesh searches for more than flesh. there's no chance at all: we are all trapped by a singular fate. nobody ever finds the one. the city dumps fill the junkyards fill the madhouses fill the hospitals fill the graveyards fill nothing else fills.
wall drinking wine
Long before I became 'rich and famous' I just sat round drinking wine and staring at the walls.
wall waiting moss
there is moss on the walls and the stain of thought and failure and waiting
art mean thinking
I should think that many of our poets, the honest ones, will confess to having no manifesto. It is a painful confession but the art of poetry carries its own powers without having to break them down into critical listings. I do not mean that poetry should be raffish and irresponsible clown tossing off words into the void. But the very feeling of a good poem carries its own reason for being... Art is its own excuse, and it’s either Art or it’s something else. It’s either a poem or a piece of cheese.
writing drunk advice
It's hot tonight and half the neighborhood is drunk. the other half is dead. if I have any advice about writing poetry it's - don't. I'm going to send out for some fried chicken.
heart want tough
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.
girlfriend humility dope
Learn, he says, that there will be hours, days and months ahead of feeling absolutely terrible and nothing can change that; neither new girlfriends, health professionals, changes of diet, dope, humility, or God.
dirty kitchen looks
I walk into the kitchen, look at the typer down there on the floor. It's a dirty floor. It's a dirty typer that types dirty stories
worry doubt delight
When I begin to doubt my ability to work the word, I simply read another writer and know I have nothing to worry about. My contest is only with myself, to do it right, with power, and force, and delight, and gamble.
morning tuesday church
It was like a church in there as only the truly lost sit in bars on Tuesday mornings at 8:00 a.m.
people waiting done
Too often the people complain that they have done nothing with their lives and then they wait for somebody to tell them that this isn't so.
passion earthquakes mahler
I like the way Mahler wandered about in his music and still retained his passion. He must have looked like an earthquake walking down the street.