Quotes from Tales of Ordinary Madness

Charles Bukowski ·  238 pages

Rating: (17.7K votes)


“I felt like crying but nothing came out. it was just a sort of sad sickness, sick sad, when you can't feel any worse. I think you know it. I think everybody knows it now and then. but I think I have known it pretty often, too often.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Tales of Ordinary Madness


“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, quote from Tales of Ordinary Madness


“Beauty is nothing, beauty won’t stay. You don’t know how lucky you are to be ugly, because if people like you, you know it’s for something else.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Tales of Ordinary Madness


“Something else is hurting you - that’s why you need pot or whiskey, or whips and rubber suits, or screaming music turned so fucking loud you can’t think.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Tales of Ordinary Madness


“Forgive me, I guess I am off in the head, but I mean, except for a quickie piece of ass it wouldn't matter to me if all the people in the world died. Yes, I know it's not nice. But I'd be as contended as a snail; it was, after all, the people who had made me unhappy.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Tales of Ordinary Madness



“I'm not the cruel type, but they are, and that's the secret.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Tales of Ordinary Madness


“..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, quote from Tales of Ordinary Madness


“to ask them to legalize pot is something like asking them to put butter on the handcuffs before they place them on you, something else is hurting you - that's why you need pot or whiskey, or whips and rubber suits, or screaming music turned so fucking loud you can't think, or madhouses or mechanical cunts or 162 baseball games in a season. or vietnam or israel or the fear of spiders. your love washing her yellow false teeth in the sink before you screw.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Tales of Ordinary Madness


“why don't we go back out there and tell them what happened?

because nothing happened except that everybody has been driven insane and stupid by life. in this society there are only two things that count: don't be caught without money and don't get caught high on any kind of high.

(Night Streets of Madness)”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Tales of Ordinary Madness


“show me a man who lives alone and has a perpetually dirty kitchen, and 5 times out of 9 I'll show you an exceptional man." "show me a man who lives alone and has a perpetually clean kitchen, and 8 times out of 9 I'll show you a man with detestable spiritual qualities.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Tales of Ordinary Madness



“bad writing's like bad women: there's just not much you can do about it”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Tales of Ordinary Madness


“I walked around the block twice, passed 200 people and failed to see a human being.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Tales of Ordinary Madness


“This birth thing. And this death thing. Each one had it's turn. We entered alone and we left alone. And most of us lived lonely and frightened and incomplete lives. An incomparable sadness descended up on me. Seeing all that life that must die. Seeing all that life that would first turn to hate, to dementia, to neuroses, to stupidity, to fear, to murder, to nothing - nothing in life and nothing in death.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Tales of Ordinary Madness


“I felt like crying but nothing came out. it was just a sort of sad sickness, sick sad, when you can’t feel any worse. I think you know it. I think everybody knows it now and then. but I think I have known it pretty often, too often.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Tales of Ordinary Madness


“When I get out, I thought, I am going to wait a while and then I am going to come back to this place, I am going to look at it from the outside and know exactly what's going on in there, and I'm going to stare at those walls and I'm going to make up my mind never to get on the inside of them again.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Tales of Ordinary Madness



“We’ve all heard that little woman who says, “Oh, it’s terrible what these young people do to themselves, in my lsi other drugs, is a terrible thing”.
Then you look, the woman who speaks in this way: you have no eyes, no teeth, no brains, no soul, no ass, no mouth, no warmth, no spirit, nothing, just a stick… and avran made ​​you wonder how to reduce it in that state teas and pastries and the church.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Tales of Ordinary Madness


“our sins are manufactured in heaven to create our own hell.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Tales of Ordinary Madness


“did you ever consider that lsd and color TV arrived for our consumption around the same time? Here comes all this explorative color pounding, and what do we do? we outlaw one and fuck up the other.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Tales of Ordinary Madness


“that's ONE thing that's wrong with intellectuals and writers - they don't feel a hell of a lot except their own comfort or their own pain. which is normal but shitty.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Tales of Ordinary Madness


“cunt and Kant and a happy home”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Tales of Ordinary Madness



“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, quote from Tales of Ordinary Madness


“I have met free man in the strangest of places and at ALL ages.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Tales of Ordinary Madness


“I was the only one without. you could hit bottom and then find another bottom. balls.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Tales of Ordinary Madness


“Perché sfotti così la tua bellezza?" le chiesi."Perché non ci vivi insieme, e via?"
"Perché la gente pensa ch'è tutto quel che ho. La bellezza non è niente, la bellezza non dura. Non lo sai quanto sei fortunato, tu, a essere brutto, che se a qualcuno gli piaci, così sai che è per qualche cosa d'altro.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Tales of Ordinary Madness


“I emit, I hiss a rather tired and gentle word like "shit", then tear this page from the machine. it's your.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Tales of Ordinary Madness



“to whom it may concern: please phone me for appointments when you want to see me. I will not answer unsolicited knocks upon the door. I need time to do my work. I will not allow you to murder my work. please understand that what keeps me alive will make me a better person toward and for you when we finally meet under easy and unstrained conditions.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Tales of Ordinary Madness


“Don't you wish you were Charles Bukowski? I can paint to. lift weights. and my little girl think that I am god. then other times, it's not so good.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Tales of Ordinary Madness


“«Καθίσατε να σκεφτείτε στα σοβαρά ότι το LSD και η έγχρωμη τηλεόραση εμφανίστηκαν στην αγορά σχεδόν ταυτόχρονα; Καταφθάνει αυτός ο εκρηκτικός βομβαρδισμός χρωμάτων, κι εμείς τί κάνουμε; Κηρύττουμε παράνομο το ένα και γαμούμε τελείως το άλλο... »”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Tales of Ordinary Madness


“Man is the victim of an environment which refuses to understand his soul.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Tales of Ordinary Madness


About the author

Charles Bukowski
Born place: in Andernach, Germany
Born date August 16, 1920
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“My prerogative as your father is to break the face of anyone who fucks with you. And I will, whether you like it or not. So if our boy Oz prefers to have his face in one piece, he’ll treat you like the precious thing you are.”
― Jasinda Wilder, quote from Falling Under


“Of course,” Armand was saying to Simon, “you know that it was an American, like yourself, who nearly ruined the wine-making in France?” “We’re Canadians.” “But that is the same thing, surely?”
― Susanna Kearsley, quote from The Splendour Falls


“Cuando el gobierno de Francia decidió, en mayo del 98, reducir la semana laboral de 39 a 35 horas, dando así una elemental lección de cordura, la medida desató clamores de protesta entre empresarios, políticos y tecnócratas. En Suiza, que no tiene problemas de desempleo, me tocó asistir, hace algún tiempo, a un acontecimiento que me dejó turulato. Un plebiscito propuso trabajar menos horas sin disminuir los salarios, y los suizos votaron en contra. Recuerdo que no lo entendí, confieso que sigo sin entenderlo todavía. El trabajo es una obligación universal desde que Dios condenó a Adán a ganarse el pan con el sudor de su frente, pero no hay por qué tomarse tan a pecho la voluntad divina. Sospecho que este fervor laboral tiene mucho que ver con el terror al desempleo, aunque en el caso de Suiza el desempleo sea una amenaza borrosa y lejana, y con el pánico al tiempo libre. Ser es ser útil, para ser hay que ser vendible. El tiempo que no se traduce en dinero, tiempo libre, tiempo de vida vivida por el placer de vivir y no por el deber de producir, genera miedo. Al fin y al cabo, eso nada tiene de nuevo. El miedo ha sido siempre, junto con la codicia, uno de los dos motores más activos del sistema que otrora se llamaba capitalismo.”
― Eduardo Galeano, quote from Upside Down: A Primer for the Looking-Glass World


“You know, if the sun and the moon were to actually collide, it would set off a cataclysmic reaction of epic proportions. Are you ready to have your world completely obliterated?”
― L.B. Simmons, quote from The Resurrection of Aubrey Miller


“I've taken the liberty of giving us a full moon. I've arranged for all stoplights to stay green. I've made some phone calls to make sure you keep smiling. I've reserved the space underneath our feet. I've gone all out for you, so why don't you go with me?”
― quote from Torture the Artist


Interesting books

The Vampire Lestat
(156.7K)
The Vampire Lestat
by Anne Rice
Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal
(132.2K)
Lamb: The Gospel Acc...
by Christopher Moore
Flow Down Like Silver: Hypatia of Alexandria
(1.9K)
Flow Down Like Silve...
by Ki Longfellow
The Once and Future King
(85.5K)
The Once and Future...
by T.H. White
Paper Towns
(692.8K)
Paper Towns
by John Green
Into the Wild
(718K)
Into the Wild
by Jon Krakauer

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.