Charles Bukowski Quotes

I really don't like being in jail.

You can keep a person locked up too long.

I mean, what is prison, really, except a good bar without the liquor?

In jail I was just like everybody else, I was sitting there praying, feeling caged.

There is one kind of prison where the man is behind bars, and everything that he desires is outside; and there is another kind where the things are behind the bars, and the man is outside.

The last place I would ever want to go is prison.

During the period of house arrest, I had an electronic manacle around my leg for 24 hours a day, and for someone who has tried to give others liberty all their adult life, that is absolutely intolerable.

They weren't crazy. They were tired of being locked up. Even I could see that.

I've come out of a small jail and entered a bigger one.

I was seized on the 8th of June, 1824, in consequence of the war with Bengal and, in company with Dr. Price, three Englishmen, one American, and one Greek, was thrown into the death prison at Ava, where we lay eleven months - nine months in three pairs and two months in five pairs of fetters.

On the wagon sped, and I, as well as my comrades, gave a despairing farewell glance at freedom as we came in sight of the long stone buildings.

The world is a penal institution.

Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.

300 was the biggest hurdle. They tried to hold us against our will.

It's [Jail's] like being at school. Except you can't leave.

There can be many bars, wires that keep a person trapped. All of them don't have to have been created for the purpose of harming or caging the bird, but they still serve that function.

I never fully understood it till my friend Professor Tolkien asked me the very simple question, 'What class of men would you expect to be most preoccupied with, and hostile to, the idea of escape?' and gave the obvious answer: jailers.

Captivity is the greatest of all evils that can befall one.

Hee is not free that drawes his chaine.

Finn smiled ruefully. "I'm a Prisoner, old man. Just like you.

Fetters of gold are still fetters, and the softest lining can never make them so easy as liberty.

The caged eagle become a metaphor for all forms of isolation, the ultimate in imprisonment. A zoo is prison.

Of what use were wings to a man fast bound in chains of iron?

It was dreadful. They tried to put the little redhead in a cage.

A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.