Quotes from The Pleasures of the Damned

“in this room
the hours of love
still make shadows.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from The Pleasures of the Damned

“invent yourself and then reinvent yourself,
don't swim in the same slough.
invent yourself and then reinvent yourself and
stay out of the clutches of mediocrity.

invent yourself and then reinvent yourself,
change your tone and shape so often that they can never categorize you.

reinvigorate yourself and
accept what is
but only on the terms that you have invented
and reinvented.

be self-taught.

and reinvent your life because you must;
it is your life and
its history
and the present
belong only to
you.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from The Pleasures of the Damned

“There is a loneliness in this world so great
that you can see it in the slow movement of the hands of a clock”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from The Pleasures of the Damned

“The centuries are sprinkled with rare magic
with divine creatures
who help us get past the common and extraordinary ills that beset us”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from The Pleasures of the Damned

“we had goldfish and they circled around and around
in the bowl on the table near the heavy drapes
covering the picture window and
my mother, always smiling, wanting us all
to be happy, told me, “be happy, Henry!”
and she was right: it’s better to be happy if you
can
but my father continued to beat her and me several times a week while
raging inside his 6-foot-2 frame because he couldn’t
understand what was attacking him from within.


my mother, poor fish,
wanting to be happy, beaten two or three times a
week, telling me to be happy: “Henry, smile!
why don’t you ever smile?”
and then she would smile, to show me how, and it was the
saddest smile I ever saw.


one day the goldfish died, all five of them,
they floated on the water, on their sides, their
eyes still open,
and when my father got home he threw them to the cat
there on the kitchen floor and we watched as my mother
smiled.

A smile to remember”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from The Pleasures of the Damned

“magic persists without us
no matter what we may do to try to spoil it”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from The Pleasures of the Damned

“And then she would smile, to show me how, and it was the saddest smile I ever saw.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from The Pleasures of the Damned

“we waste days like mad blackbirds and pray for alcoholic nights
our silk-sick human smiles wrap around us like somebody else's confetti”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from The Pleasures of the Damned

“we are a scene chalked out with the sick white brush of age”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from The Pleasures of the Damned

“About church: the trouble with a mask is it never changes.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from The Pleasures of the Damned

“they say that nothing is wasted: either that or it all is.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from The Pleasures of the Damned

“I did not like war, even when it was the popular thing to do.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from The Pleasures of the Damned

“art as the spirit wanes the form appears.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from The Pleasures of the Damned

“no leaders, please invent yourself and then reinvent yourself, don’t swim in the same slough. invent yourself and then reinvent yourself and stay out of the clutches of mediocrity. invent yourself and then reinvent yourself, change your tone and shape so often that they can never categorize you. reinvigorate yourself and accept what is but only on the terms that you have invented and reinvented. be self-taught. and reinvent your life because you must; it is your life and its history and the present belong only to you.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from The Pleasures of the Damned

“that boy was ready for his life to come, he would undoubtedly be highly successful, the lying little prick.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from The Pleasures of the Damned

“I felt better when everything was in
disorder. It will take me some months to get back to normal: I can't even find a roach to commune with. I have lost my rhythm. I can't sleep. I can't eat. I have been robbed of my filth.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from The Pleasures of the Damned

“I felt better when everything was in disorder. It will take me some months to get back to normal: I can't even find a roach to commune with. I have lost my rhythm. I can't sleep. I can't eat. I have been robbed of my filth.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from The Pleasures of the Damned

“my poems are only bits of scratching
on the floor of a
cage.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from The Pleasures of the Damned

“a poem is a city burning”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from The Pleasures of the Damned

“of late
I've had this thought
that this country
has gone backwards
4 or 5 decades
and that all the
social advancement
the good feeling of
person toward
person
has been washed
away
and replaced by the same
old
bigotries

we have
more than ever
the selfish wants of power
the disregard for the
weak
the old
the impoverished
the
helpless.

we are replacing want with
war
salvation with
slavery.

we have wasted the
gains

we have become
rapidly
less.

we have our Bomb
it is our fear
or damnation
and our
shame.

now
something so sad
has hold of us
that
the breath
leaves
and we can't even
cry.

- putrefaction”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from The Pleasures of the Damned

“people who believe in politics are like people who believe in god: they are sucking wind through bent straws. there”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from The Pleasures of the Damned

“it’s not the large things that send a man to the madhouse. death he’s ready for, or murder, incest, robbery, fire, flood … no, it’s the continuing series of small tragedies that send a man to the madhouse …”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from The Pleasures of the Damned

“I get the blues for him, for me, for all of us: for want of something to do we keep slaying our small dragons as the big one waits.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from The Pleasures of the Damned

“take a writer away from his typewriter and all you have left is the sickness which started him typing in the beginning.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from The Pleasures of the Damned

“it's when you're on the row
that you notice that
everything
is owned
and that there are locks on
everything
this is the way a democracy
works:
you get what you can,
try to keep that
and add to it
if possible”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from The Pleasures of the Damned

“we are all little forgotten pieces of shit
only we walk and talk
laugh
make jokes
and
the shit shits

- the shit shits”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from The Pleasures of the Damned

About the author

Popular quotes

“From Lankaster to Lorenz, scientists have gotten it wrong. Parasites are complex, highly adapted creatures that are at the heart of the story of life. If there hadn't been such high walls dividing scientists who study life - the zoologists, the immunologists, the mathematical biologists, the ecologists - parasites might have been recognized sooner as not disgusting, or at least not merely disgusting. If parasites were so feeble, so lazy, how was it that they could manage to live inside every free-living species and infect billions of people? How could they change with time so that medicines that could once treat them became useless? How could parasites defy vaccines, which could corral brutal killers like smallpox and polio?”
― Carl Zimmer, quote from Parasite Rex: Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures

“I am in this same river. I can't much help it. I admit it: I'm racist. The other night I saw a group (or maybe a pack?) or white teenagers standing in a vacant lot, clustered around a 4x4, and I crossed the street to avoid them; had they been black, I probably would have taken another street entirely. And I'm misogynistic. I admit that, too. I'm a shitty cook, and a worse house cleaner, probably in great measure because I've internalized the notion that these are woman's work. Of course, I never admit that's why I don't do them: I always say I just don't much enjoy those activities (which is true enough; and it's true enough also that many women don't enjoy them either), and in any case, I've got better things to do, like write books and teach classes where I feel morally superior to pimps. And naturally I value money over life. Why else would I own a computer with a hard drive put together in Thailand by women dying of job-induced cancer? Why else would I own shirts mad in a sweatshop in Bangladesh, and shoes put together in Mexico? The truth is that, although many of my best friends are people of color (as the cliche goes), and other of my best friends are women, I am part of this river: I benefit from the exploitation of others, and I do not much want to sacrifice this privilege. I am, after all, civilized, and have gained a taste for "comforts and elegancies" which can be gained only through the coercion of slavery. The truth is that like most others who benefit from this deep and broad river, I would probably rather die (and maybe even kill, or better, have someone kill for me) than trade places with the men, women, and children who made my computer, my shirt, my shoes.”
― Derrick Jensen, quote from The Culture of Make Believe

“Social rejection—or fearing it—is one of the most common causes of anxiety. Feelings of inclusion depend not so much on having frequent social contacts or numerous relationships as on how accepted we feel, even in just a few key relationships.20 Small wonder that we have a hardwired system that is alert to the threat of abandonment, separation, or rejection: these were once actual threats to life itself, though they are only symbolically so today. Still, when we hope to be a You, being treated like an It, as though we do not matter, carries a particularly harsh sting.”
― Daniel Goleman, quote from Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships

“Some men spend their lives looking for ways to punish themselves for having been born.”
― Ross Macdonald, quote from The Chill

“When I was in my teens, I made an appraisal of how comfortable my life could turn out when I became the age I am now. Because of a mechanical failure, the prediction was inexact.”
― Arthur Nersesian, quote from The Fuck-Up

Interesting books

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.