Henry Charles Bukowski quotes are strong messages of an American German Poet, novelist, and short story writer that capture the ups and downs of his life as a motivational speaker.
Today, you have the chance to read and find inspiration in the wonderful words of Charles Bukowski. We’ve put together a collection of quotes to keep you motivated.
Charles Bukowski Quotes
If you’re not familiar with Charles Bukowski, reading his work is like taking a wild ride on a Honey Badger.
He fearlessly tackles any topic, nothing is too intimidating to write about, and you’re in for unpredictable surprises with every turn of the page.
You never know what the man will do or say next. Below are the great quotes from Charles Bukowski.
1. Great art is horse shit, buy tacos.
2. An intellectual says a simple thing the hard way. An artist says a hard thing only.
3. Find what you love and let it kill you.
4. Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I’m not going to make it, but you laugh inside – remembering all the times you’ve felt that way.
5. People run from rain but sit in bathtubs full of water.
6. 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.
7. Baby, I said, I’m a genius but nobody knows it but me.
8. I guess the only time most people think about injustice is when it happens to them.
9. The tigers have found me and I do not care. ”Charles Bukowski Quotes”
10. And yet women –– good women –– frightened me because they eventually wanted your soul, and what was left of mine, I wanted to keep.
11. Bad taste creates many more millionaires than feel-good, very good.
12. The nine-to-five is one of the greatest atrocities sprung upon mankind. You give your life away to a function that doesn’t interest you.
13. I wanted the whole world or nothing.
Charles Quotes About Life
14. What a woman wants is a reaction. What a man wants is a woman.
15. Sometimes you just have to pee in the sink.
16. If you get married they think you’re finished and if you are without a woman they think you’re incomplete.
17. Poetry is what happens when nothing else can.
18. 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.
19. I want so much that am not here and do not know where to go.
20. My beer-drunk soul is sadder than all the dead Christmas trees in the world.
21. In my work, as a writer, I only photograph, in words, what I see.
22. What matters most is how well you walk through the fire.
23. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.
24. Dogs and angels are not very far apart.
25. Anything is a waste of time unless you are fucking well or creating well or getting well or looming toward a kind of phantom love happiness.
26. Genius might be the ability to say a profound thing simply.
27. People are strange: they are constantly angered by trivial things, but on a major matter like totally wasting their lives, they hardly seem to notice.
28. You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.
29. The best often die by their hand just to get away, and those left behind can never quite understand why anybody would ever want to get away from them.
Charles Quotes About Love
30. Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must live. ”Charles Bukowski Quotes”
31. Do you hate people? I don’t hate them… I just feel better when they’re not around.
32. The problem with the world is that intelligent people are full of doubts, while stupid ones are full of confidence.
33. Find what you love and let it kill you.
34. Real loneliness is not necessarily limited to when you are alone.
35. I loved you like a man loves a woman he never touches, only writes to, and keeps little photographs of.
36. Being alone never felt right. sometimes it felt good, but it never felt right.
37. A love like that was a serious illness, an illness from which you never entirely recover.
38. Human relationships were strange. I mean, you were with one person for a while, eating and sleeping and living with them, loving them, talking to them, going places together, and then it stopped.
39. She was always thinking of sex, she carried it around with her like something in a paper bag.
40. Your boys can keep your virgins give me hot old women in high heels with asses that forgot to get old.
Charles Bukowski Poems
41. And nobody finds the one but they keep looking crawling in and out of beds.
42. Saw a beautiful blonde girl embrace a young man there and kiss him with what seemed hunger and I stood and watched until they broke away.
43. When I think of myself dead, I think of someone making love to you when I’m not around.
44. There is always one woman to save you from another.
45. She’s got red hair like lightning from heaven.
46. I am going to die alone just the way I live.
47. 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
48. We had nothing to do but drink wine and find love.
49. Some people don’t like anybody famous. Some people don’t like anybody who isn’t.
50. Forget my brother, I am my keeper.
51. We are like roses that have never bothered to bloom when we should have bloomed and it is as if the sun has become disgusted with waiting.
Best Charles Bukowski Quotes
52. There are worse things than being alone but it often takes decades to realize this and most often when you do it’s too late and there’s nothing worse than too late.
53. There is a place in the heart that will never be filled space and even during the best moments and the greatest times we will know more than ever there is a place in the heart that will never be filled and we will wait and wait in that space.
54. There’s a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I’m too tough for him, I say, stay in there, I’m not going to let anybody see you.
55. Some lose all minds and become souls, insane. Some lose all soul and become mind, intellectual. Some lose both and become accepted.
56. Our disappointment sits between us.
57. The trouble with a mask is it never changes.
58. 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.
59. An intellectual says a simple thing the hard way. An artist says a hard thing simply.
60. We must… We must bring our light to the darkness
61. The nine-to-five is one of the greatest atrocities sprung upon mankind. You give your life away to a function that doesn’t interest you.
Inspiring Quotes from Charles
62. 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.
63. We’re all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.
64. You have to die a few times before you can live.
65. If you can love, love yourself first.
66. Stop insisting on clearing your head—clear your fucking heart instead.
67. Poetry is what happens when nothing else can
68. I guess the only time most people think about injustice is when it happens to them.
69. Censorship is the tool of those who need to hide actualities from themselves and others.
70. A spark can set a whole forest on fire. Just a spark. Save it. – ”Charles Bukowski Quotes”
71. “I wanted the whole world or nothing.
72. Almost everybody is born a genius and buried an idiot.
73. Beware of those who seek constant crowds; they are nothing alone.
74. 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.
75. Human relationships didn’t work anyhow. Only the first two weeks had any zing, then the participants lost their interest. Masks dropped away and real people began to appear: cranks, imbeciles, the demented, the vengeful, sadists, killers.
Motivational Quote from Charles
76. My whole life has been a matter of fighting for one simple hour to do what I want to do.
77. Some people crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.
78. Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.
79. I wasn’t going anywhere and neither was the rest of the world. We were all just hanging around waiting to die and meanwhile doing little things to fill the space. Some of us weren’t even doing little things. We were vegetables.
80. Too often people complain that they have done nothing with their lives and then they wait for somebody to tell them that this isn’t so.
81. Age is no crime but the shame of a deliberately wasted life among so many deliberately wasted lives is.
82. The nine-to-five is one of the greatest atrocities sprung upon mankind. You give your life to a function that doesn’t interest you.
83. There will always be something to ruin our lives, it all depends on what or which finds us first. We are always ripe and ready to be taken.
84. I carry death in my left pocket. Sometimes I take it out and talk to it: “Hello, baby, how are you doing? When are you coming for me? I’ll be ready.
85. I stopped looking for a Dream Girl, I just wanted one that wasn’t a nightmare.
86. Once a woman turns against you, forget it. They can love you, then something turns in them. They can watch you dying in a gutter, run over by a car, and they’ll spit on you.
Great Quotes from Bukowski
87. She’s mad but she’s magic. There’s no lie in her fire.
88. Many a good man has been put under the bridge by a woman.
89. She had wild eyes, slightly insane. She also carried an overload of compassion that was real enough and which cost her something.
90. Never had I known a young girl so beautiful and at the same time so gentle and intelligent. Where were her men? Where had they failed? ”Charles Bukowski Quotes”
91. Beautiful thoughts and beautiful women never last.
92. If you get married, they think you’re finished. And if you are without a woman they think you’re incomplete.
93. Maybe she hadn’t saved the world but she had made a major improvement.
Going through Charles Bukowski’s quotes, it’s like he handed us a shot of truth with no chaser. His words hit hard, speaking about life’s realities, love, and survival.
It’s as if he uncorked the bottled emotions many of us keep sealed.
Bukowski’s quotes are like a raw conversation with a tough but honest friend, reminding us that life is messy, beautiful, and worth every sip, no matter how bitter or sweet.
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