Charles Bukowski Quotes

I feel not unlike a small boy, waking from a bad dream to find reality not much of an improvement.

I don't know whether I'm misanthropic. It seems to me I'm constantly disappointed. I'm very easily disappointed.

But suppose you struggle through to the good and find that it also is dreadful? How if food itself turns out to be the very thing you can't eat, and home the very place you can't live, and your very comforter the person who makes you uncomfortable? Then, indeed, there is no rescue possible: the last card has been played.

The dark covers me and I cannot run now.

I do not write often now - not for want of something to say, but from a loathing of all I see and hear. Why dwell upon it?

If I could get my membership fee back, I'd resign from the human race.

Not being happy really is my fear.

My dark secrets are life threatening. Pockets of unhappiness set in aspic that build and build. I have this primitive feeling that if something good happens, it is going to be followed by something bad. There is always a price to pay.

The Truth, when you finally chase it down, is almost always far worse than your darkest visions and fears.

While one might laugh at the meaningless boredom of people a decade or two ago, the emptiness has for many now moved from the state of boredom to a state of futility and despair, which holds promise of dangers.

People are hurting, and they feel very disengaged and disenfranchised.

Feeling alone makes negative feelings worse. When you feel alone, frustration quickly can become anger, fear quickly can become panic.

You know, if my life was a horse, I’d shoot it. (Susan)

There's not even room enough to be anywhere/It's not dark yet, but it's getting there.../I was born here and I'll die here against my will/I know it looks like I'm moving, but I'm standing still.

He looked as though his life had not only passed him by but paused along the way to spit in his face.

There's only one great evil in the world today. Despair.

I'm sorry I let everybody down, I'm fighting just to pay my bills. I don't have the stomach for this anymore... I don't have the desire for it. I feel bad for the people... I wish they could get their money back.

As if at the age of eighteen life already sucked beyond any hope of improvement.

What is there so fearful as the expectation of evil tidings delayed? ... Misery is a more welcome visitant when she comes in her darkest guise and wraps us in perpetual black, for then the heart no longer sickens with disappointed hope.

I, myself, often wished to be spared the expectation of better days ahead or such.

All right, then, I thought: here I am in the bottom of a well.

Sometimes I feel so sick at the state of the world I can't even finish my second apple pie.

Look at Charlie Brown's face. Would you please hold still a minute Charlie Brown? I want Linus to study your face. Now this is what you call a failure face, Linus. Notice how it has failure written all over it. Study it carefully Linus. You rarely see such a good example. Notice the deep lines, the dull vacant look in the eyes. Yes, I would say this is one of the finest examples of a failure face that your liable to see for a long while.

I could scream down 90 mountains to less than dust if only one living human had eyes in the head and heart in the body, but there is no chance, my god, no chance. rat with rat dog with dog hog with hog, play the piano drunk listen to the drunk piano, realize the myth of mercy stand still as even a child's voice snarls and we have not been fooled, it was only that we wanted to believe.

Darkness invades the dreams of the glassblower. Of all the unpleasantries his dreams grab in out of the night air, an extinguished light is the worst. Light in his dreams, was always hope: the basic, moral hope. As the contacts break helically away, hope turns to darkness, and the glassblower wakes sharply tonight crying, "Who? Who?"