The best quotes by Charles Bukowski

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It was true that I didn't have much ambition, but there ought to be a place for people without ambition, I mean a better place than the one usually reserved. How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6: 30 A. M. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?

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The free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it - basically because you feel good, very good, when you are near or with them.

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As anyone can tell you, I'm not an agreeable person: I don't even know what that means. I've always admired the baddies, the outlaws, the sons of bitches. I don't like perfectly shaven men, with a tie and a good job. I like desperate men, with broken teeth, with the brain in pieces and a disgusting life. I'm interested in them. They're full of surprises. I also have a small spot for sluts, for those who get drunk and swear, that have loose tights and smudged make-up. I'm more interested in perverts than saints. I relax with stoners because I'm a stoner too. I don't like laws, morale, religions, rules. I don't want to be moulded by society.

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There's nothing to mourn about death any more than there is to mourn about the growing of a flower. What is terrible is not death but the lives people live or don't live up until their death. They don't honor their own lives, they piss on their lives. They shit them away. Dumb fuckers. They concentrate too much on fucking, movies, money, family, fucking. Their minds are full of cotton. They swallow God without thinking, they swallow country without thinking. Soon they forget how to think, they let others think for them. Their brains are stuffed with cotton. They look ugly, they talk ugly, they walk ugly. Play them the great music of the centuries and they can't hear it. Most people's deaths are a sham. There's nothing left to die.

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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, backpacking, yoga, copulating, gambling, drinking, hanging around, frozen yogurt, Beethoven, Bach, Buddha, Christ, TM, H, carrot juice, suicide, handmade suits, jet travel, New York City, and then it all evaporated and fell apart. People had to find things to do while waiting to die. I guess it was nice to have a choice.

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This life is a whore and she'll probably break my heart, but shit, I'm in love. This is how it works, rhum and pear, because there are some strong moments that leave a sour flavour in the mouth, and others that are so nice to make you forget that bad back-flavour that life has.

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I gave you so many chances that you should've taken me away a long time ago.

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It happens to everyone, especially to the young, to think of having the world by the neck, and sometimes it's true. But at the same moment that someone is convinced everything is going for the best, there are some statistical laws that work at their backs ready to rip them off.

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Think of the millions of people who live together even if they don't like it, they hate their job but are afraid of losing it, it's normal that they should have the face they have.

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I was drawn to all the wrong things: I liked to drink, I was lazy, I didn't have a God, politics, ideas, ideals. I was settled into nothingness; a kind of non-being, and I accepted it. I didn't make for an interesting person. I didn't want to be interesting, it was too hard. What I really wanted was only a soft, hazy space to live in, and to be left alone. On the other hand, when I got drunk I screamed, went crazy, got all out of hand. One kind of behavior didn't fit the other. I didn't care.