Getting Drunk On The Best Charles Bukowski Quotes The Web Has To Offer

"If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start." - Charles Bukowski

At age 13 he discovered alcohol. At age 24 he began writing. At age 35 he started into poetry. At age 50 he published his first novel. At age 51 he finally could quit his job to write full time. What more do you need to know?

1. 1. “I went to the worst of bars hoping to get killed but all I could do was to get drunk again.”
2. 2. “Writers are desperate people and when they stop being desperate they stop being writers.”
3. 3. “Almost everybody is born a genius and buried an idiot.”
4. 4. "Success is always dangerous. It can make an asshole out of anybody."
5. 5. "The whole world is a sack of shit ripping open. I can’t save it."
6. 6. “Great art is horse shit, buy tacos.”
7. 7. “You just get so alone at times that it just makes sense.”
8. 8. “We don’t even ask happiness just a little less pain”
9. 9. “Something else is hurting you - that’s why you need pot or whiskey, or screaming music turned so fucking loud you can’t think”
10. 10. “Anger is but a mask that covers nothing”
11. 11. “The less I needed, the better I felt”
12. 12. “Baby," I said, "I'm a genius but nobody knows it but me.” “you boys can keep your virgins give me hot old women in high heels with asses that forgot to get old.”
13. 13. "Sometimes you just have to pee in the sink."
14. 14. "The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence."
15. 15. "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."
16. 16. "I don't know about other people, but when I wake up in the morning and put my shoes on, I think, Jesus Christ, now what?"
17. 17. "The problem with the world is that everyone is a few drinks behind."
18. 18. "You have to die a few times before you can really live."
19. 19. "I often carry things to read so that I will not have to look at the people."
20. 20. "Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead."
21. 21. "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."
22. 22. "What matters most is how well you walk through the fire."
23. 23. "There is a loneliness in this world so great that you can see it in the slow movement of the hands of a clock."
24. 24. "I tell you such fine music waits in the shadows of hell"
25. 25. "I want to be with you, it is as simple, and as complicated as that."
26. 26. "Beware of those who seek constant crowds; they are nothing alone."
27. 27. "My Dear, Find what you love and let it kill you. Let it drain you of your all. Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness. Let it kill you and let it devour your remains. For all things will kill you, both slowly and fastly, but it's much better to be killed by a lover.-Falsely yours"
28. 28. "What’s the difference between a man and a parasite? A man builds. A parasite asks, 'Where’s my share?"
29. 29. "I don’t like the clean-shaven boy with the necktie and the good job. I like desperate men, men with broken teeth and broken minds and broken ways. They interest me. They are full of surprises and explosions."
30. 30. "Hello, Death. But I’ve had almost 6 decades. I’ve given you so many clean shots at me what I should have been yours long ago. I want to be buried near the racetrack… where I can hear the stretch run."
31. 31. "I took the salt and the pepper, seasoned the broth, broke the crackers into it, and spooned it into my illness."
32. 32. "All people start to come apart finally and there it is: just empty ashtrays in a room or wisps of hair on a comb in the dissolving moonlight."
33. 33. "Today I will walk in the sun. I will simply walk in the sun"
34. 34. "Great writers are indecent people they live unfairly saving the best part for paper. good human beings save the world so that bastards like me can keep creating art, become immortal. if you read this after I am dead it means I made it."
35. 35. "The tigers have found me and I do not care."
36. 36. "An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way."
37. 37. "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."
38. 38. "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."
39. 39. "People run from rain but sit in bathtubs full of water."
40. 40. "I was laying in bed one night and I thought I’ll just quit. To hell with it. And another little voice inside me said “Don’t quit. Save that tiny little ember of spark. And never give them that spark because as long as you have that spark, you can start the greatest fire again."

Forever blessed by the likes of Charles. His unfiltered thoughts are relatable on so many levels. Maybe because he worked the shit jobs, he wasn't easy on the eyes, and he was always unapologetically himself. RIP Charles.

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