Charles Bukowski Quotes

Drinking makes uninteresting people matter less and late at night, matter not at all.

People who are strangers to liquor are incapable of talking about literature.

We drink one another's health and spoil our own.

The other guys drink, but they don't drink anywhere near what I used to. And I think they're slightly respectful of the fact that I'm off it, so it's not a problem.

In my family, they were all big boozers.

Wine is wont to show the mind of man.

Sometimes people go into my business because they like to drink, which - that's insane.

I don't think vodka is useful. I think it's for people who don't like alcohol, in which case, you probably shouldn't be drinking it.

Drinking is in reality an occupation which employs a considerable portion of the time of many people; and to conduct it in the most rational and agreeable manner is one of the great arts of living.

On True Blood — I've never told anybody this—but I was so nervous and I was so drunk that after I shot the scene I was going up to the crew members — and I had just met all these people the day before — and I was going up to all of them like, 'You got a boner! You do! You've got one!' It was horrible. Horrible!

Drinking more often brings out the best in the good than the worst in the bad.

Sensible people advise against drinking on an empty stomach, but to my mind it is the best sort of drinking.

Drunks do not have friends, but accomplices.

If I'm drinking I can either be the nicest guy ever or I'm the guy you should leave alone.

There is drinking in lots of the songs because there is drinking in life. Drinking stimulates the imagination.

I drink to make other people more interesting.

I have to think hard to name an interesting man who does not drink.

I can honestly say, all the bad things that ever happened to me were directly, directly attributed to drugs and alcohol. I mean, I would never urinate at the Alamo at nine o'clock in the morning dressed in a woman's evening dress sober.

The fact that you fell out of bed makes some people think you had more than one drink before you called for help.

I can hardly bring myself to caution you against drinking, because I am persuaded that I am writing to a rational creature, a gentleman, and not to a swine. However, that you may not be insensibly drawn into that beastly custom of even sober drinking and sipping, as the sots call it, I advise you to be of no club whatsoever.

The first two drinks were always wonderfully liberating. You think better. You're braver, and you'll say anything. If you could just hang in there with two or three, it'd be beautiful. The trouble was I couldn't.

You know what the worst part about my drinking is? When I'm drunk I slur. You know, like I say racial slurs. Wow, nobody likes that at a barbeque.

A man will part with anything so long as he's drunk, and you're drunk with him.

That's the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.

Among the small number of things that I have liked and known how to do well, what I have assuredly known how to do best is drink. Even though I have read a lot, I have drunk even more. I have written much less than most people who write; but I have drunk much more than most people who drink.