Charles Bukowski Quotes

Any man who has seen the face of death knows better than to seek him out a second time.

You have to learn to do everything, even to die.

Lord, let me live until I die.

And because I love this life, I know I shall love death as well.

How many more times do we have to come to terms with death before we find safety?

Dying is a very simple thing. I've looked at death and really I know. If I should have died it would have been very easy for me. Quite the easiest thing I ever did. But the people at home do not realize that. They suffer a thousand times more.

All I know is that I must soon die, but what I know least is this very death which I cannot escape.

Bod shrugged. "So?" he said. "It's only death. I mean, all of my best friends are dead.

To be content with death may be better than to desire it.

Death then, being the way and condition of life, we cannot love to live if we cannot bear to die.

You, too, will someday die, perhaps under inconvenient circumstances, at a time when you do not particularly wish to, and for causes that you cannot yet predict.

It is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realise the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life.

A life of action and danger moderates the dread of death.

Only those persons who have lived, really lived, are ready, welcoming, receptive, thankful to death. Then death is not the enemy. Then death becomes the fulfillment.

If I were a maker of books I should compile a register, with comments, of different deaths. He who should teach people to die, would teach them to live.

If it's peace you find in dying, well then let the time be near.

Some people are paralyzed by the consciousness of death, other people live with it.... The fatwa certainly made me think about it a lot more than I ever had. I guess I know I'm going to die, but then, so are you.

God is dead. Marx is dead. And I don't feel so well myself.

We might remember ... not to fear death; it is the only way to be cleansed.

What do we care, if the world is a joke? We'll give it a big kiss, we'll give it a poke. Death wears a big hat cause he's a big bloke.

He can give me what you cannot. Death is not a lover. Oh yes, he is.

Boredom is my worst enemy. It's killed a lot of my friends, but it won't get me. When I get bored, I go risk my life somewhere.

He will live ill who does not know how to die well.

I prefer my oysters fried; that way I know my oysters died.

...Proximity to a noose danger and death ... can make man or woman appreciate things.