40 Of The Best Bukowski Quotes To Read During Your Existential Crisis

“If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mocke…”

— Charles Bukowski, amazon.com

“If you persisted long enough, the good luck usually came. Most people couldn't wait on the luck, though, so they quit.”

— Charles Bukowski, amazon.com

“Having nothing to struggle against, they have nothing to struggle for.”

— Charles Bukowski, amazon.com

“Nothing was ever in tune. People just blindly grabbed at whatever there was: communism, health foods, zen, surfing, ballet, hypnotism, group encounters, orgies, biking, herbs, Catholicism, weight-lifting, travel, withdrawal, vegetarianism, India, painting, writing, sculpting, composing, conducting,…”

— Charles Bukowski, amazon.com

“People run from rain but sit in bathtubs full of water.”

— Charles Bukowski, amazon.com

“did she love you? only as an extension of herself. what else can love be?”

— Charles Bukowski, amazon.com

“Love is a form of prejudice. You love what you need, you love what makes you feel good, you love what is convenient. How can you say you love one person when there are ten thousand people in the world that you would love more if you ever met them? But you'll never meet them. All right, so we do the…”

— Charles Bukowski, amazon.com

“I remember awakening one morning and finding everything smeared with the color of forgotten love.”

— Charles Bukowski, amazon.com

“the whole world is caught in her glance and at last the universe is magnificent.”

— Charles Bukowski, amazon.com

“I never felt right being alone; sometimes it felt good but it never felt right.”

— Charles Bukowski, amazon.com

“Human relationships were strange. I mean, you were with one person a while, eating and sleeping and living with them, loving them, talking to them, going places together, and then it stopped.”

— Charles Bukowski, amazon.com

“there is a loneliness in this world so great that you can see it in the slow movement of the hands of a clock”

— Charles Bukowski, amazon.com

“The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose, they sliced a little bit more off you, until there was nothing left. At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole god-damned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing…”

— Charles Bukowski, amazon.com

“To be young is the only religion.”

— Charles Bukowski, amazon.com

“the area dividing the brain and the soul is affected in many ways by experience – some lose all mind and become soul: insane. some lose all soul and become mind: intellectual. some lose both and become: accepted.”

— Charles Bukowski, amazon.com

“A good writer knew when not to write.”

— Charles Bukowski, amazon.com

“We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't.”

— Charles Bukowski, amazon.com

“the courage it took to get out of bed each morning to face the same things over and over was enormous.”

— Charles Bukowski, amazon.com

“I'm tired of waiting to die. Let's go out.”

— Charles Bukowski, amazon.com

“if it doesn't come bursting out of you in spite of everything, don't do it.”

— Charles Bukowski, allpoetry.com

“You have to die a few times before you can really live.”

— Charles Bukowski, amazon.com

““Potential," I said, "doesn't mean a thing. You've got to do it. Almost every baby in a crib has more potential than I have.””

— Charles Bukowski, amazon.com

“Kissing is more intimate than fucking.”

— Charles Bukowski, amazon.com

“Something else is hurting you - that’s why you need pot or whiskey, or whips and rubber suits, or screaming music turned so fucking loud you can’t think.”

— Charles Bukowski, amazon.com

“Stop insisting on clearing your head — clear your fucking heart instead.”

— Charles Bukowski, goodreads.com

“regret is mostly caused by not having done anything.”

— Charles Bukowski, amazon.com

“People don't need love. What they need is success in one form or another. It can be love but it needn't be.”

— Charles Bukowski, amazon.com

“you invented me and I invented you and that's why we don't get along on this bed any longer.”

— Charles Bukowski, amazon.com

“Nobody can save you but yourself and you’re worth saving.”

— Charles Bukowski, amazon.com