Charles Bukowski Quotes

I made practice runs down to skid row to get ready for my future.

There are men and women still on the streets, and that's all they are saying Can you spare a quarter? I come from a crowd of people who were current on the outlook on life, who were social and knew where they were and had some input into how things seemed to be.

My mum literally drives into Skid Row every day and manages teams that are assembled to walk around and engage with usually chronically homeless people and try to get them into permanent housing.

We had to leave Norway and go where it was all happening, which was London. We loved it there, but it was hard. We had no money - we were literally starving. It started to get ugly.

When I was a kid out here in L.A., I was homeless, I didn't have any money and I was living in my car. I wasn't averse to going down to Santa Monica Boulevard and letting a guy buy me a sandwich. Know what I mean?

When I was living in New York and didn't have a penny to my name, I would walk around the streets and occasionally I would see an alcove or something. And I'd think, that'll be good, that'll be a good spot for me when I'm homeless.

For a long time, I couldn't even afford food and clothing. I climbed from the very bottom of the society.

I used to sit in front of McDonald's and ask people for dollars to get me a cheeseburger. It was bad.

I do Skid Row every night.

Show me a man with very little money and I will show you a bum.

There are no "points of light" for those who sleep on grates and park benches.

Men who were heads of families wandering the streets, eating from garbage cans

The high cost of housing is crushing poor families and sending them to a state of desperation.

I receive food stamps but I have never been on welfare.

I used to work with a relief group that took care of the people in the dump. We took them food and water and medicine and built homes and took them to church services, whatever was needed.

I know what it's like to be on public assistance and to be unemployed. And I know what it's like to be evicted.

With commitment and the right investments, we can create a San Francisco where no one is forced, relegated, or allowed to sleep on the streets, and where no one endures addiction or mental illness on the streets without supportive and effective services.

There was however, a group of 507 individuals who were permanent street dwellers [in Miami.] These 507 were not indigent, down-on-their-luck families. They were single people and every one of them was mentally ill.

I walked the streets of New York for two years begging for a job, and I couldn't get one.

The niceties of existence were not a matter of concern, yet everything around was closed down most of the time. If you lived in a middle-class community in Chicago, children and adults came daily to the door saying, 'We are starving, how about a potato?' I speak from poignant memory.

I know what it's like to be hungry. I know what it's like to be homeless. I know what it's like to have to choose between breaking the law and feeding yourself. I know what it's like to take meals at shelters and at Salvation Army facilities. I know what it's like to beg for money on the streets.

Do I gotta go sell me a whole lotta crack for decent shelter and clothes on my back?

Precious was one of a large number of people on the street, many of whom appeared to be women; some, like Precious, actually were.

A guy I interviewed for Hard Times says, "What do I remember about the Great Depression? That I was hungry, that's all." Elemental things.

Poverty calls us to sow hope.... Poverty is the flesh of the poor Jesus, in that child who is hungry, in the one who is sick, in those unjust social structures.