Charles Bukowski Quotes

I have never felt so lonely as on a golf course in the midst of a championship with thousands of people around, especially when things began to go wrong and the crowds started wandering away.

When you live alone you no longer know what it is to tell a story: the plausible disappears at the same time as the friends. You let events flow by too: you suddenly see people appear who speak and then go away; you plunge into stories of which you can't make head or tail: you'd make a terrible witness.

The world doesn't understand me and I don't understand the world, that's why I've withdrawn from it.

I don't feel very optimistic in London.

I don't really like being with people my own age for long periods, because all we talk about is our decrepitude, how the world is changing for the worse even though it isn't.

I'm not very interested in people. I recognize it in myself - there is a basic indifference toward people.

I have a grim outlook on the world, and in particular on humanity. Spent years denying it, but I am very misanthropic. And I live alone on a mountain for a reason.

I think the degree of alienation and despair is more universal.

At a very young age, I could look at people and tell that everyone was, in a sense, worthless in their own mind. And you couldn't trust anyone. No one was good.

I used to be an optimist, but now I know that nothing is going to turn out as I expect.

I never loved the world around me as it was.

A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past; he is one who is prematurely disappointed in the future.

I used to think that the feeling of alienation that I would have was just me, but I realise that it's also a symptom of the modern world.

It is difficult to live among people because silence is so difficult.

Society than solitude is worse, And man to man is still the greatest curse.

You're the sort of person who, on principle, no longer expects anything of anything. There are plenty, younger than you or less young, who live in the expectation of extraordinary experiences: from books, from people, from journeys, from events, from what tomorrow has in store. But not you. You know that the best you can expect is to avoid the worst.

Loneliness Got a mind of its own The more people around The more you feel alone

We are awakening from the dream of isolation, from the dream of loneliness, and it's a terrible shock.

A lot of people spend their time just floating/ We were victims together but lonely.

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

There were people everywhere but no one was mine, and I was no one's.

I frequently lock myself in my studio. I do not often see the people I love, and in the end I shall suffer for it... painting is one's private life.

Did you ever walk through a room that's packed with people, and feel so lonely you can hardly take the next step?

Solitude does not consist in living alone; it consists in living with others, with people who take no interest in you.