Charles Bukowski Quotes

What a miserable thing life is: you're living in clover, only the clover isn't good enough.

My dreams have become puny with the reality my life has become.

If you're alive for more than five minutes, you're going to be disappointed.

I hate not giving the people what they want.

Our desires always disappoint us; for though we meet with something that gives us satisfaction, yet it never thoroughly answers our expectation.

What has changed is that nothing has changed... that's what has made me more unhappy than everything else.

After you get what you want you don't want it.

Some people will always be disappointed.

Hope deferred makes the heart sick.

It must be horrible to do things that you don't like hoping to please other people, and they don't like it either, and you've got to eat it.

You know you can't satisfy anybody.

The events I sought were never as great as I needed them to be.

Expectations are resentments under construction.

What does not satisfy when we find it, was not the thing we were desiring.

We came to the end, we found nothing. Nothing!!! And we cursed because we were hoping for so much less.

Tonight sucks. And look at me. Look at - look at stupid Buffy. Too dumb for college, and-and-and freak Buffy, too strong for construction work. And-and my job at the magic shop? I was bored to tears even before the hour that wouldn't end. And the only person that I can even stand to be around is a... neutered vampire who cheats at kitten poker.

The loneliest moment in life is when you have just experienced that which you thought would deliver the ultimate, and it has just let you down.

Expectation improperly indulged in must end in disappointment.

I went whale watching once. It was very similar to watching people on a boat become disappointed.

The want of a thing is perplexing enough, but the possession of it, is intolerable.

How my achievements mock me!

I feel disappointed, but I don't remember just what I expected.

I should have been happy: I wasn’t.

The same sun which gilds all nature, and exhilarates the whole creation, does not shine upon disappointed ambition.

To long for that which comes not. To lie a-bed and sleep not. To serve well and please not. To have a horse that goes not. To have a man obeys not. To lie in jail and hope not. To be sick and recover not. To lose one's way and know not. To wait at door and enter not, and to have a friend we trust not: are ten such spites as hell hath not.