Charles Bukowski Quotes

Sometimes I get lonely, but it's nice to be alone.

There's a difference between loneliness and solitude. You pursue solitude, I think. But loneliness is a completely different isolating thing.

Woe unto him that is never alone, and cannot bear to be alone.

I believe that it is sometimes less difficult to wake up and feel that I am alone when I really am, than to wake up with someone else and be lonely.

I was alone more than most kids.

There might be some hours of loneliness. But there was something wonderful even in loneliness. At least you belonged to yourself when you were lonely.

All alone! Whether you like it or not, alone is something you'll be quite a lot!

Solitude is the human condition in which I keep myself company. Loneliness comes about when I am alone without being able to split up into the two-in-one, without being able to keep myself company.

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone.

Even though I get a lot done with my solitude, and I make the best use of it possible, I always think solitude is an interlude in a period of time, which is populated by others.

Be alone even when there's a million people around, because tomorrow it will be a different million people.

Isolation must precede true society.

Solitude is a human presumption. Every quiet step is thunder to beetle life underfoot, a tug of impalpable thread on the web pulling mate to mate and predator to prey, a beginning or an end. Every choice is a world made new for the chosen.

Our age is so gregarious that there is at present a marked prejudice against anyone being alone. It is looked down on, and a need to be alone is almost considered a fault, a weakness, as though if one cannot endure - more - enjoy being with other people every minute one is aloof, unreal, and somehow to be pitied.

Such a great misfortune, not to be able to be alone.

One's need for loneliness is not satisfied if one sits at a table alone. There must be empty chairs as well.

I've never been lonely. I've been in a room... I've felt suicidal, I've been depressed. I've felt awful ... awful beyond all , but I never felt that one other person could enter that room and cure what was bothering me...or that any number of people could enter that room. In other words, loneliness is something I've never been bothered with because I've always had this terrible itch for solitude.

I take much pleasure in being alone but there is also a strange warm grace in not being alone.

Only he knew that to be left alone is not always to be forsaken.

All of our unhappiness comes from our inability to be alone.

I was never less alone than when by myself.

Solitude is pleasant. Loneliness is not.

Language... has created the word 'loneliness' to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word 'solitude' to express the glory of being alone.

There are times in my life when I just want to be by myself.

I like the idea of isolation, I like the idea of solitude. You can be connected and have a phone and still be lonely.