Charles Bukowski Quotes

I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.

Too much self-centered attitude, you see, brings, you see, isolation. Result: loneliness, fear, anger. The extreme self-centered attitude is the source of suffering.

I may not have gone to high school every day, but I spent whole a lot of my adolescence feeling vulnerable and confused and alone... just like everybody else.

Knowing that you're the one who's been rejected, God it makes you feel isolated. I defy anybody not to be a bit upset. I felt as though I'd walked into the house trailing all this baggage.

I suffered when I was in my late twenties and early thirties. I was awkward, I stuck out, I was nerdy.

I was a quiet teenager, introverted, full of angst.

Not having a roof over your head at night must be frightening, cold, lonely and depressing. To be seriously ill as well must be beyond upsetting.

No one has it easy, and to some degree, everyone feels lonely and powerless, which may cause them to make hurtful decisions.

When he was dry, he believed it was alcohol he needed, but when he had a few drinks in him, he knew it was something else, possibly a woman; and when he had it all -- cash, booze, and a wife -- he couldn't be distracted from the great emptiness that was always falling through him and never hit the ground.

Even in the depths of sleep, in which he had to satisfy his need for protection and love by curling himself up into a trembling ball, he could not rid himself of the feeling of loneliness and homelessness.

My dear Tom, Delighted to get your letter. Do write again. This life is terrible and I don't understand how it can be endured.

But there's no joy at all, people say "Oh well he's drunk and happy let him sleep it off"--The poor drunkard is *crying*--He's crying for his mother and father and great brother and great friend, he's crying for help. (p.111)

You can't pay enough money to... cure that feeling of being broken and confused.

Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it.

But I also think all of the great stories in literature deal with loneliness. Sometimes it's by way of heartbreak, sometimes it's by way of injustice, sometimes it's by way of fate. There's an infinite number of ways to examine it.

If misery loves company, misery has company enough.

People, unprotected by their roles, become isolated in beauty and intellect and illness and confusion.

That is how prison is tearing me up inside. It hurts every day. Every day takes me further from my life.

I was an awkward kid.

It really costs me a lot emotionally to watch myself on screen. I think of myself, and feel like I'm quite young, and then I look at this old man with the baggy chins and the tired eyes and the receding hairline and all that.

I have been in love, and in debt, and in drink, this many and many a year.

I lost my sense of trust, honesty and compassion. I crashed down and became what I consider an emotional mess. I've never been so miserable in my whole life. I just wanted to go to bed and never get up.

Without a family, man, alone in the world, trembles with the cold.

We all have times when we go home at night and pull out our hair and feel misunderstood and lonely and like we're falling. I think the brain is such that there is always going to be something missing.

At times in my life, I have been utterly lonely. At other times, I've had disgusting infectious diseases. Try admitting these things in our culture.