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
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