Charles Bukowski Quotes

Sometimes it's better to just be quiet, to not think of anything at all. Out of silence comes the greatest creativity.

Now I'm confused. Now I don't know what I want.

I would stay in my room for days, for days at times, just trying to get it together, to know what my next phase was going to be.

Between the fear that something would happen and the hope that still it wouldn't, there is much more space than one thinks. On that narrow, hard, bare and dark space a lot of us spend their lives.

I'm a guy that likes to sit in the quiet and think about things, and sometimes it's way more relaxing to have dead silence.

There is nothing in the world more pitiable than an irresolute man, oscillating between two feelings, who would willingly unite the two and who does not perceive that nothing can unite them

You need an infinite stretch of time ahead of you to start to think, infinite energy to make the smallest decision. The world is getting denser. The immense number of useless projects is bewildering. Too many things have to be put in to balance up an uncertain scale. You can't disappear anymore. You die in a state of total indecision.

One of the biggest lessons I've learned recently is that when you don't know what to do, you should do nothing until you figure out what to do because a lot of times you feel like you are pressed against the wall, and you've got to make a decision. You never have to do anything. Don't know what to do? Do nothing.

Lie down and listen to the crabgrass grow.

There are things that can only happen through you when you are still. Silence is often the most important work you can do.

Because if I let myself feel the pain and the anger, I think it might kill me. Or I might kill someone else. I know it's wrong to feel that way about God and I know its's wrong to not feel anything. I hate it. I don't hate God. I hate not loving Him.

Guilt can make you doubt yourself at the very moment when you need to proceed with certainty.

Stop, stop. Do not speak. The ultimate truth is not even to think.

When in doubt, stand still.

My day-mind can endure / Upright, in hope, all it must undergo. / But O, afraid, unsure, / My night-mind waking lies too low, too low.

But why do I notice everything? She thought. Why must I think? She did not want to think. She wanted to force her mind to become a blank and lie back, and accept quietly, tolerantly, whatever came.

Sometimes, in life, nothing happens. But, sometimes, nothing happens beautifully.

I think that I'm throwing but I'm thrown

The only thing more unthinkable than leaving was staying; the only thing more impossible than staying was leaving.

I would like to sit still for a while but I'm restless you know and sitting still is only an ideal like celibacy and complete cleanliness.

At that moment I had no mind to change, or not change, or throw against the nearest wall.

He rested sitting on the un-stepped mast and sail and tried not to think but only to endure.

One of the things I like most of all is being in my study, in my barn, with absolutely no sound anywhere thinking about something. It's extremely important to me.

Silence is something more than just a pause; it is that enchanted place where space is cleared and time is stayed and the horizon itself expands. In silence, we often say, we can hear ourselves think; but what is truer to say is that in silence we can hear ourselves not think....In silence, we might better say, we can hear someone else think.

Someone shouts, "Enough!" and I think too much and nothing at all.