Quotes from the Book

Life's as kind as you let it be.
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.
What is your advice to young writers?” “Drink, fuck and smoke plenty of cigarettes.
Never trust a man in a jumpsuit
Ann, I love you. I hope my car starts. I hope the sink isn't plugged up. I'm glad I didn't fuck a groupie. I'm glad I'm not very good at getting into bed with strange females. I'm glad I'm an idiot. I'm glad I don't know anything. I'm glad I haven't been murdered. When I look at my hands and they are still on my wrists, I think to myself, I am lucky.
There was nothing glorious about the life of a drinker or the life of a writer.
If you’re going to try, go all the way. otherwise, don’t even start.
That’s how they hooked you—they gave you just enough to keep alive but they never gave you enough so you could finally escape.
What is your advice to young writers?" "Drink, fuck and smoke plenty of cigarettes." "What is your advice to older writers?" "If you're still alive, you don't need any advice." "What is the impulse that makes you create a poem?" "What makes you take a shit?
But you know, only boring people get bored. They have to prod themselves continually in order to feel alive.
Three a.m. drunks, all over America, were staring at the walls, having finally give it up. You didn't have to be drunk to get hurt, to be zeroed out by a woman; but you could get hurt and become a drunk. You might think for a while, especially when you were young, that luck was with you, and sometimes it was. But there were all manner of averages and laws working that you know nothing about, even as you imagined things were going well. Some night, some hot summer Thursday, night you became the drunk, you were out there alone in a cheap rented room, and no matter how many times you'd been out there before, it was no help, it was even worse because you had got to thinking you wouldn't face it again. All you could do was light another cigarette, pour another drink, check the peeling walls for lips and eyes. What men and women did to each other was beyond comprehension.
What is your advice to young writers?” “Drink, fuck and smoke plenty of cigarettes.” “What is your advice to older writers?” “If you’re still alive, you don’t need any advice.” “What is the impulse that makes you create a poem?” “What makes you take a shit?” “What do you think of Reagan and unemployment?” “I don’t think of Reagan or unemployment.
You know, doctor, wisdom comes at a hell of an hour—when youth is gone, the storm is over and the girls have gone home.

About Charles Bukowski

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