Henry Charles Bukowski (born Heinrich Karl Bukowski; August 16, 1920 – March 9, 1994) was a German-American poet, novelist, and short story writer.
That the young rich smell the stink of the poor and learn to find it a bit amusing. They had to laugh, otherwise it would be too terrifying.
Writers are nothing but beggars with a good line.
A woman is a full time job. You have to choose your profession.
When you play the field selfishly everything works against you: one can’t insist on love or demand affection. you’re finally left with whatever you have been willing to give which often is: nothing.
There still might be a place for us somewhere.
Poetry is what happens when nothing else can.
I am a dolt of a man, easily made happy or even stupidly happy almost without cause and left alone I am mostly content.
It was only the matter of a new voice. Nobody listened to an old voice anymore. Old voices became a part of one's self, like a fingernail.
I made practice runs down to skid row to get ready for my future.
Something that never happens anywhere at any time.
I was an Agnostic. Agnostics didn't have much to argue about.
People in love often become edgy, dangerous. They lose their sense of perspective.
I see men assassinated around me every day. I walk through rooms of the dead, streets of the dead, cities of the dead; men without eyes, men without voices; men with manufactured feelings and standard reactions; men with newspaper brains, television souls and high school ideas.
Only the boring get bored
you've got to burn straight up and down and then maybe sidewise for a while and have your guts scrambled by a bully and the demonic ladies, you've got to run along the edge of madness teetering, you've got to starve like a winter alleycat, you've go to live with the imbecility of at least a dozen cities, then maybe maybe maybe you might know where you are for a tiny blinking moment.
terror finally becomes almost bearable but never quite terror creeps like a cat crawls like a cat across my mind
As a recluse I couldn't bear traffic. It had nothing to do with jealousy, I simply disliked people, crowds, anywhere, except at my readings. People diminished me, they sucked me dry.
my 6 foot goddess makes me laugh the laughter of the mutilated who still need love. . . she has saved me from everything that is not here
… and we are in bed together laughing and we don’t care about anything.
as a child i suppose i was not quite normal. my happiest times were when i was left alone in the house on a saturday.