Charles Bukowski Quotes

Alas, Postumus, the fleeting years slip by, nor will piety give any stay to wrinkles and pressing old age and untamable death.

By the time you've reached your sixties, you do know that one day you will die, and knowing that is at least the beginning of wisdom.

Alas! the fleeting years, how they roll on!

I'm writing this book because we're all going to die.

Death eats up all things, both the young lamb and old sheep; and I have heard our parson say, death values a prince no more than a clown.

I glared at him. "I may not die now... but I'm going to die sometime. Every minute of the day, I get closer. And I'm going to get old.

But death we are, and death we've always been.

Multa ferunt anni venientes commoda secum, Multa recedentes adimiunt. (The years, as they come, bring many agreeable things with them; as they go, they take many away.)

The only certainty is death.

And he isn't crying for her, not for his grandma, he's crying for himself: that he: too, is going to die one day. And before that his friends wil die, and the friends of his friends, and, as time passes, the children of his friends, and, if his fate is truly bitter, his own children. (58)

Time flies never to be recalled.

Even at our birth, death does but stand aside a little. And every day he looks towards us and muses somewhat to himself whether that day or the next he will draw nigh.

You feel a sense of urgency, especially at my advanced age, when you're staring into the grave.

These trees and these old people have one thing in common, they're both going in the ground soon!

Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.

I think of dying every day... At a certain age, you should be prepared to go at any time.

The brief span of our poor unhappy life to its final hour Is hastening on; and while we drink and call for gay wreaths, Perfumes, and young girls, old age creeps upon us, unperceived.

We are dying, we are dying, piecemeal our bodies are dying and our strength leaves us, and our soul cowers naked in the dark rain over the flood, cowering in the last branches of the tree of our life.

No one gets out of here alive.

We all know we're going to die. We're all circling the drain. Some of us are closer than others. I'm 90, I know I'm closer to the drain than most people.

As one gets older, this question of death, becomes more vexing and urgent.

Death is always there, just beneath the surface.

It is not dying, but living, that is a preparation for Death.

Death is fortunate for the child, bitter to the youth, too late to the old.

Here I am...wanting to accomplish something and completely forgetting it must all end--that there is such a thing as death.