Charles Bukowski Quotes

I felt like if I wasn't around, maybe my shot would be gone.

I just don't like to lose what's in the window.

I failed myself when I ruined a once-in-a-lifetime chance to be Robert Griffin III's running mate during his Heisman Trophy-winning season at Baylor.

I blew a chance at a million dollars.

How great a Possibility, how small a realized Result.

Undeveloped, the whole thing,tossed into a box before we really had a chance to know what we had, and that's why we broke up.

She had lived her early years as though she were waiting for something she might, but never did, become.

Some people spend the whole of their lives sitting waiting for one train, only to find that they never even made it to the station.

The future is just wasted on some people.

The saddest thing in life is wasted talent

Film critics said I gave a voice to the fear we all have: that we'll reach a certain point in our lives, look around and realize that all the things we said we'd do and become will never come to be - and that we're ordinary.

We've all got a black book of missed opportunities.

My 20s were a lost decade. I didn't do much of anything.

I always look back and say I should have made more. It should have been more lucrative, but it wasn't.

The tragedy of life is not that man loses but that he almost wins.

Hell begins on the day when God grants us a clear vision of all that we might have achieved, of all the gifts which we have wasted, of all that we might have done which we did not do.

An emotion that lives with me is a sense of 'what might have been' had injuries not robbed me of my most lethal weapon - speed.

History is nothing if not an epic tale of missed opportunities.

Many people die with their music still in them. Why is this so? Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before they know it, time runs out.

If you ask people what they've always wanted to do, most people haven't done it. That breaks my heart.

The deepest personal defeat suffered by human beings is constituted by the difference between what one was capable of becoming and what one has in fact become.

The chance you passed up or missed could have had any number of different outcomes, and it's easy to fantasize about how much better every one of those outcomes would have been.

I peaked early. I was told I'd missed my boat.

What a pity so few

I knew guys way more talented than me who fell through the cracks.