“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, quote from Factotum
“My ambition is handicapped by laziness”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Factotum
“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, quote from Factotum
“Baby," I said, "I'm a genius but nobody knows it but me.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Factotum
“She was desperate and she was choosey
at the same time and, in a way, beautiful, but she didn't have quite enough going for her to become what
she imagined herself to be.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Factotum
“I was a man who thrived on solitude; without it I was like another man without food or water. Each day without solitude weakened me. I took no pride in my solitude; but I was dependent on it. The darkness of the
room was like sunlight to me.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Factotum
“How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 8:30 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, quote from Factotum
“It was like the beginning of life and laughter. It was the real meaning of the sun”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Factotum
“Nothing is worse than to finish a good shit, then reach over and find the toilet paper container empty. Even the most horrible human being on earth deserves to wipe his ass.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Factotum
“For each Joan of Arc there is a Hitler perched at the other end of the teeter-totter.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Factotum
“That was all a man needed: hope. It was lack of hope that discouraged a man.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Factotum
“jan was an excellent fuck...she had a tight pussy and she took it like it was a knife that was killing her.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Factotum
“People don't need love. What they need is success in one form or another. It can be love but it needn't be.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Factotum
“What? You’d dare drink right after getting out of jail for intoxication?”
That’s when you need a drink the most.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Factotum
“I drank for some time, three or four days. I couldn't get myself to read the want ads. The thought of sitting
in front of a man behind a desk and telling him that I wanted a job, that I was qualified for a job, was too
much for me. Frankly, I was horrified by life, at what a man had to do simply in order to eat, sleep, and keep himself clothed. So I stayed in bed and drank. When you drank the world was still out there, but for
the moment it didn't have you by the throat. ”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Factotum
“It was the first time i had been alone for five days. I was a man who thrived on solitude; without it I was like another man without food or water. Each day without solitude weakened me. I took no pride in my solitude; but I was dependent on it. The darkness of the room was like sunlight to me.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Factotum
“I remembered my New
Orleans days, living on two five-cent candy bars a day for weeks at a time in order to have leisure to
write. But starvation, unfortunately, didn't improve art. It only hindered it. A man's soul was rooted in
his stomach. A man could write much better after eating a porterhouse steak and drinking a pint of
whiskey than he could ever write after eating a nickel candy bar. The myth of the starving artist was a
hoax.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Factotum
“I always started a job with the feeling that I'd soon quit or be fired, and this gave ma a relaxex manner that was mistaken for intelligence or some secret power.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Factotum
“She was perfect, pure maddening sex, and she knew it, and she played on it, dripped it, and allowed you to suffer for it.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Factotum
“I got up and walked back to my roominghouse. The moonlight was bright. My footsteps echoed in the empty street and it sounded as if somebody was following me, I looked around. I was mistaken. I was quite alone.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Factotum
“Frankly, I was horrified by life, at what a man had to do simply in order to eat, sleep, and keep himself clothed. So I stayed in bed and drank. When you drank the world was still out there, but for the moment it didn't have you by the throat.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Factotum
“Someday,” I told Jan, “when they demonstrate that the world has four dimensions instead of just three, a man will be able to go for a walk and just disappear. No burial, no tears, no illusions, no heaven or hell. People will be sitting around and they’ll say, ‘What happened to George?’ And somebody will say, ‘Well, I don’t know. He said he was going out for a pack of cigarettes.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Factotum
“That scene in the office stayed with me. Those cigars, the fine clothes. I thought of good steaks, long
rides up winding driveways that led to beautiful homes. Ease. Trips to Europe. Fine women. Were they
that much more clever than I? The only difference was money, and the desire to accumulate it.
I'd do it too! I'd save my pennies. I'd get an idea, I'd spring a loan. I'd hire and fire. I'd keep whiskey in
my desk drawer. I'd have a wife with size 40 breasts and an ass that would make the paperboy on the
corner come in his pants when he saw it wobble. I'd cheat on her and she'd know it and keep silent in
order to live in my house with my wealth. I'd fire men just to see the look of dismay on their faces. I'd
fire women who didn't deserve to be fired.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Factotum
“You bitch," I whispered, "I love you." Then I came.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Factotum
“A woman is a full time job. You have to choose your profession.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Factotum
“I kept telling myself that all the women in the world weren´t whores, just mine.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Factotum
“Yes?’ he asked, looking at me over the sheet.
‘I’m a writer temporarily down on my inspirations.’
‘Oh, a writer, eh?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘No, I’m not.’
‘What do you write?’
‘Short stories mostly. And I’m halfway through a novel.’
‘A novel, eh?’
‘Yes.’
‘What’s the name of it?’
‘”The Leaky Faucet of My Doom.”‘
‘Oh, I like that. What’s it about?’
‘Everything.’
‘Everything? You mean, for instance, it’s about cancer?’
‘Yes.’
‘How about my wife?’
‘She’s in there too.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Factotum
“Even the most horrible human being on earth deserves to wipe his ass.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Factotum
“Baby," I said, "I’m a genius but nobody knows it but me."
She looked down at me. "Get up off the floor you damn fool and get me a drink.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Factotum
“She was desperate and she was choosey at the same time and, in a way, beautiful, but she didn’t have quite enough going for her to become what she imagined herself to be.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Factotum
Charles Bukowski
Born place: in Andernach, Germany
Born date August 16, 1920
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“إنني أضع قدمًا أمام الأخرى، ومن ثَم القَدم الأخرى أمام الأولى، ومن ثَم آمل في أن
أتمكَّن من فعل ذلك من جديد. لا أكثر.”
― Paul Auster, quote from In the Country of Last Things
“How we hate to admit that we would like nothing better than to be the slave! Slave and master at the same time! For even in love the slave is always the master in disguise. The man who must conquer the woman, subjugate her, bend her to his will, form her according to his desires—is he not the slave of his slave? How easy it is, in this relationship, for the woman to upset the balance of power! The mere threat of self-dependence, on the woman’s part, and the gallant despot is seized with vertigo. But if they are able to throw themselves at one another recklessly, concealing nothing, surrendering all, if they admit to one another their interdependence, do they not enjoy a great and unsuspected freedom? The man who admits to himself that he is a coward has made a step towards conquering his fear; but the man who frankly admits it to every one, who asks that you recognize it in him and make allowance for it in dealing with him, is on the way to becoming a hero. Such a man is often surprised, when the crucial test comes, to find that he knows no fear. Having lost the fear of regarding himself as a coward he is one no longer: only the demonstration is needed to prove the metamorphosis. It is the same in love. The man who admits not only to himself but to his fellowmen, and even to the woman he adores, that he can be twisted around a woman’s finger, that he is helpless where the other sex is concerned, usually discovers that he is the more powerful of the two. Nothing breaks a woman down more quickly than complete surrender. A woman is prepared to resist, to be laid siege to: she has been trained to behave that way. When she meets no resistance she falls headlong into the trap.
To be able to give oneself wholly and completely is the greatest luxury that life affords. Real love only begins at this point of dissolution. The personal life is altogether based on dependence, mutual dependence. Society is the aggregate of persons all interdependent. There is another richer life beyond the pale of society, beyond the personal, but there is no knowing it, no attainment possible, without firs traveling the heights and depths of the personal jungle. To become the great lover, the magnetiser and catalyzer, the blinding focus and inspiration of the world, one has to first experience the profound wisdom of being an utter fool. The man whose greatness of heart leads him to folly and ruin is to a woman irresistible. To the woman who loves, that is to say. As to those who ask merely to be loved, who seek only their own reflection in the mirror, no love however great, will ever satisfy them. In a world so hungry for love it is no wonder that men and women are blinded by the glamour and glitter of their own reflected egos. No wonder that the revolver shot is the last summons. No wonder that the grinding wheels of the subway express, though they cut the body to pieces, fail to precipitate the elixir of love. In the egocentric prism the helpless victim is walled in by the very light which he refracts. The ego dies in its own glass cage…”
― Henry Miller, quote from Sexus
“In defense of King, country, and family, he would unhesitatingly have sacrificed his virtue to Nessie, had that been required. If it was a question of Olivia marrying a man with syphilis and half the British army being exterminated in battle, versus himself experiencing a "personal interview" with Richard Caswell, though, he rather thought Olivia and the King had best look to their own devices.”
― Diana Gabaldon, quote from Lord John and the Private Matter
“I bet I catch the first prey today,”
― Erin Hunter, quote from Fading Echoes
“To her, though, nothing could have been more serious, and she felt about reading what some writers felt about writing: that it was impossible not to do it and that at this late stage of her life she had been chosen to read as others were chosen to write.”
― Alan Bennett, quote from The Uncommon Reader
The White Album
Venom
Cordelia's Honor
The Madness of Lord...
Great House
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