Charles Bukowski People Quotations

Some people never go crazy, What truly horrible lives they must live.

All our days are marked with/ unexpected/ affronts--some/ disastrous, others/ less so/ but the process is/ wearing and/ continuous./ Attrition rules./ Most give/ way/ leaving/ empty spaces/ where people should/ be.

i dunno," i said, "but i have an idea that people who don't think too much tend to look younger longer

When I'm drinking around people, I tend to get silly or pugnacious or wild, which can cause problems.

I have one problem, I don’t hate people. They disgust me and I want to get away from them. I do not have hatred. I have an escape mechanism.

the people are the biggest horror show on earth, have been for centuries.

As a recluse I couldn't bear traffic. It had nothing to do with jealousy, I simply disliked people, crowds, anywhere, except at my readings. People diminished me, they sucked me dry.

People just weren't interesting. Maybe they weren't supposed to be. But animals, birds, even insects were. I couldn't understand it.

People don't do me much good.

The trouble with these people is that their cities have never been bombed and their mothers have never been told to shut up.

Most people are much better at saying things in letters than in conversation, and some people can write artistic, inventive letters, but when they try a poem or story or novel they become pretentious.

Early evening traffic was beginning to clog the avenue with cars. The sun slanted down behind him. Harry glanced at the drivers of the cars. They seemed unhappy. The world was unhappy. People were in the dark. People were terrified and disappointed. People were caught in traps. People were defensive and frantic. They felt as if their lives were being wasted. And they were right.

The best thing about the bedroom was the bed. I liked to stay in bed for hours, even during the day with covers pulled up to my chin. It was good in there, nothing ever occurred in there, no people, nothing.

people are not good to each other. perhaps if they were our deaths would not be so sad.

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

I am not like other people. I am burning in hell. The hell of myself.

To me, nudity is a joke. I don't think nude people are very attractive at all. I like my women fully clothed. I like to imagine what might be under there. It might not be the standard thing. Imagine, stripping a woman down, and she has a body like a little submarine. With periscope, propellers, torpedoes. That would be the one for me. I'd marry her right off and be faithful to the end.

People in love often become edgy, dangerous. They lose their sense of perspective.

Too often the people complain that they have done nothing with their lives and then they wait for somebody to tell them that this isn't so.

Most people are not ready for death, theirs or anybody elses.

People were usually much better in their letters than in reality. They were much like poets in this way.

That's how it is with books, isn't it: They're not in a hurry. They'll wait for you till you're ready. People empty me. I have to go away to refill.

since some people had told me that I was ugly, I always preferred shade to the sun, darkness to light

People just don't know how to write down a simple easy line. It's difficult for them; it's like trying to keep a hard-on while drowning - not many can do it.

I was glad I wasn't in love, that I wasn't happy with the world. I like being at odds with everything. People in love often become edgy, dangerous. They lose their sense of perspective. They lose their sense of humor. They become nervous, psychotic bores. They even become killers.

I often carry things to read so that I will not have to look at the people.

I guess we often get the deep blues, both of us, and wonder what it all means- the people, the buildings, the day by day things, the waste of time, of ourselves.

The streets were full of insane & dull people. Most of them lived in nice houses and didn't seem to work, and you wondered how they did it.

I wasn't sleeping on the streets at night. Of course, there were a lot of good people sleeping in the streets. They weren't fools, they just didn't fit into the needed machinery of the moment. And those needs kept altering.

writers are desperate people and when they stop being desperate they stop being writers.

Most people's deaths are a sham. There's nothing left to die.

Sundays kill more people than bombs.

I walked around the block twice, passed 200 people and failed to see a human being.

Careful poetry and careful people live only long enough to die safely.

This is very important -- to take leisure time. Pace is the essence. Without stopping entirely and doing nothing at all for great periods, you're gonna lose everything...just to do nothing at all, very, very important. And how many people do this in modern society? Very few. That's why they're all totally mad, frustrated, angry and hateful.

The more cats you have, the longer you live. If you have a hundred cats, you'll live ten times longer than if you have ten. Someday this will be discovered, and people will have a thousand cats and live forever.

Do you hate people? I don't hate them...I just feel better when they're not around.

People need me. I fill them. If they can't see me for a while they get desperate, they get sick. But if I see them too often I get sick. It's hard to feed without getting fed.

I am not a snob; it is simply that I am not interested with what most people have to say, or what they want to do — mostly with my time.

I can almost understand why people leap from bridges.

My heart is a thousand years old. I am not like other people.

Boring damned people. All over the earth. Propagating more boring damned people. What a horror show. The earth swarmed with them.

Human relationships didn't work anyhow. Only the first two weeks had any zing, then the participants lost their interest. Masks dropped away and real people began to appear: cranks, imbeciles, the demented, the vengeful, sadists, killers. Modern society had created its own kind and they feasted on each other. It was a duel to the death--in a cesspool.

So, that’s what they wanted: lies. Beautiful lies. That’s what they needed. People were fools. It was going to be easy for me.

People do too much. They say too much.

the tired sunsets and the tired people - it takes a lifetime to die and no time at all.

I don’t understand people, never will. It looks like I got to travel pretty much alone.

With me, my main vision for life was to avoid as many people as possible. The less people I saw the better I felt.

People who believe in politics are like people who believe in God: they are sucking wind through bent straws.

Bad poetry is caused by people who sit down and think, Now I am going to write a Poem.

People empty me. I have to get away to refill.

Some people like what you do, some people hate what you do, but most people simply don't give a damn.

People were interesting at first. Then later, slowly but surely, all the flaws and madness would manifest themselves. I would become less and less to them; they would mean less and less to me.

People with no morals often considered themselves more free, but mostly they lacked the ability to feel or love.

I guess the only time most people think about injustice is when it happens to them.

The world is full of boring, identical and mindless people.

Beauty is nothing, beauty won’t stay. You don’t know how lucky you are to be ugly, because if people like you, you know it’s for something else.

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.

The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose, they sliced a little more off you, until there was nothing left. At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole goddamned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidate who reminded them most of themselves.