Charles Bukowski Men Quotations

Show me a man who lives alone and has a perpetually clean kitchen, and 8 times out of 9 I'll show you a man with detestable spiritual qualities.

Never envy a man his lady. Behind it all lays a living hell.

We have wasted History like a bunch of drunks shooting dice back in the men's crapper of the local bar.

You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.

It's not the large things that send a man to the madhouse... no, it's the continuing series of small tragedies... not the death of his love but the shoelace that snaps with no time left.

I see men assassinated around me every day. I walk through rooms of the dead, streets of the dead, cities of the dead; men without eyes, men without voices; men with manufactured feelings and standard reactions; men with newspaper brains, television souls and high school ideas.

An artist is a man who says a difficult thing in a simple way

I have two rules. One is, never trust a man who smokes a pipe. The other is, never trust a man with shiny shoes.

Some men hope for revolution but when you revolt and set up your new government you find your new government is still the same old Papa, he has only put on a cardboard mask.

No matter how little a man has he will find that he will always settle for less.

I've never met another man I'd rather be.

Dog is much admired by Man because he believes in the hand which feeds him. A perfect set-up. For 13 cents a day you've got a hired killer who thinks you are god. A dog can't tell a Nazi from a Republican from a Commie from a Democrat and, many times, neither can I.

Style means no shield at all. Style means no front at all. Style means ultimate naturalness. Style means one man alone with billions of men about.

He asked, "What makes a man a writer?" "Well," I said, "it's simple. You either get it down on paper, or jump off a bridge.

I never met another man I'd rather be. And even if that's a delusion, it's a lucky one.

I am not a man who looks for solutions in God or politics. If somebody else wants to do the dirty work and create a better world for us and he can do it, I will accept it.

Sex is interesting, but it's not totally important. I mean it's not even as important (physically) as excretion. A man can go seventy years without a piece of ass, but he can die in a week without a bowel movement.

I couldn't get myself to read the want ads. The thought of sitting in front of a man behind a desk and telling him that I wanted a job, that I was qualified for a job, was too much for me. Frankly, I was horrified by life, at what a man had to do simply in order to eat, sleep, and keep himself clothed. So I stayed in bed and drank. When you drank the world was still out there, but for the moment it didn't have you by the throat.

It’s nice enough to make a man weep, but I don’t weep, do you?

We do not abandon ship. I say, as corny as it may sound, through the strength and spirit and fire and dare and gamble of a few men in a few ways we can save the carcass of humanity from drowning. No light goes out until it goes out. Let's fight as men, not rats. Period. No further addition.

I am a dolt of a man, easily made happy or even stupidly happy almost without cause and left alone I am mostly content.

The whole LSD, STP, marijuana, heroin, hashish, prescription cough medicine crowd suffers from the "Watchtower" itch: you gotta be with us, man, or you're out, you're dead. This pitch is a continual and seeming MUST with those who use the stuff. It's no wonder they keep getting busted.

Never bring a lot of money to where a poor man lives. He can only lose what little he has. On the other hand it is mathematically possible that he might win whatever you bring with you. What you must do, with money and the poor, is never let them get too close to one another.

When I was young I was depressed all the time. But suicide no longer seemed a possibility in my life. At my age there was very little left to kill. It was good to be old, no matter what they said. It was reasonable that a man had to be at least 50 years old before he could write with anything like clarity.

I got lost somehow, began staring up her legs. I was always a leg man. It was the first thing I saw when I was born. But then I was trying to get out. Ever since I have been working in the other direction and with pretty lousy luck.

I was a man who thrived on solitude; without it I was like another man without food or water. Each day without solitude weakened me. I took no pride in my solitude; but I was dependent on it. The darkness of the room was like sunlight to me.

That was all a man needed: hope. It was lack of hope that discouraged a man.

There were always men looking for jobs in America. There were always all these usable bodies. And I wanted to be a writer. Almost everybody was a writer. Not everybody thought they could be a dentist or an automobile mechanic but everybody knew they could be a writer. Of those fifty guys in the room, probably fifteen of them thought they were writers. Almost everybody used words and could write them down, i.e., almost everybody could be a writer. But most men, fortunately, aren't writers, or even cab drivers, and some men - many men - unfortunately aren't anything.

The difference between a brave man and a coward is a coward thinks twice before jumping in the cage with a lion. The brave man doesn't know what a lion is. He just thinks he does.

Many a good man has been put under the bridge by a woman.

some men never die and some men never live but we're all alive tonight.

I would give anything for a female's hand on me tonight. they soften a man and then leave him listening to the rain.

beware the average man the average woman beware their love, their love is average seeks average but there is genius in their hatred there is enough genius in their hatred to kill you to kill anybody not wanting solitude not understanding solitude they will attempt to destroy anything that differs from their own not being able to create art they will not understand art they will consider their failure as creators only as a failure of the world

The worst men have the best jobs the best men have the worst jobs or are unemployed or locked in madhouses.

I am for the small man who has not forgotten, for the man who loves his beer and his women and his sunlight

…He was always high on drugs. I was not a drug man, but in case I wanted to hide from myself for a few days, I knew I could get anything I wanted from him.

Never trust a man in a jumpsuit

A man needed somebody. There wasn't anybody around, so you had to make up somebody, make him up to be like a man should be. It wasn't make-believe or cheating. The other way was make-believe and cheating: living your life without a man like him around.

Each man's hell is in a different place: mine is just up and behind my ruined face.

the writing of some men is like a vast bridge that carries you over the many things that claw and tear. The Wine of Forever

To me Art (poetry) is a continuous and continuing process and that when a man fails to write good poetry he fails to live fully or well.

I once lay in a white hospital for the dying and the dying self, where some god pissed a rain of reason to make things grow only to die, where on my knees I prayed for LIGHT, I prayed for l*i*g*h*t, and praying crawled like a blind slug into the web where threads of wind stuck against my mind and I died of pity for Man, for myself, on a cross without nails, watching in fear as the pig belches in his sty, farts, blinks and eats.

I would certainly end up forever crying the blues into a coffee cup in a park for old men playing chess or silly games of some sort.

There is something about writing poetry that brings a man close to the cliff's edge.

for a man of 55 who didn't get laid until he was 23 and not very often until he was 50 I think that I should stay listed via Pacific Telephone until I get as much as the average man has had

Hey, Hank, I notice all the women around your place lately ... good looking stuff; you're doing all right." "Sam," I say, "that's not true; I am one of God's most lonely men.

he asked, "what makes a man a writer?" "well," I said, "it's simple, it's either you get it down on paper or you jump off a bridge. writers are desperate people and when they stop being desperate they stop being writers." "are you desperate?" "I don't know...

beware those quick to praise for they need praise in return beware those who are quick to censor they are afraid of what they do not know beware those who seek constant crowds for they are nothing alone beware the average man the average woman beware their love, their love is average seeks average

like the fox I run with the hunted and if I’m not the happiest man on earth I’m surely the luckiest man alive.

I've found out why men sign their names to their works- not that they created them but more than the others did not.

Sometimes a man doesn’t know what to do about things and sometimes it’s best to lie very still and try not to think at all about anything.

Where did all the women come from? The supply was endless. Each one of them was individual, different. Their pussies were different, their kisses were different, their breasts were different, but no man could drink them all, there were too many of them, crossing their legs, driving men mad. What a feast!

The street to my left was backed up with traffic and I watched the people waiting patiently in the cars. There was almost always a man and a women, staring straight ahead, not talking. It was, finally, for everyone, a matter of waiting. You waited and you waited- for the hospital, the doctor, the plumber, the madhouse, the jail, papa death himself. First the signal red, then the signal was green. The citizens of the world ate food and watched t.v. and worried about their jobs or lack of the same, while they waited.

But then if you lied to a man about his talent just because he was sitting across from you, that was the most unforgivable lie of them all, because that was telling him to go on, to continue which was the worst way for a man without real talent to waste his life, finally. But many people did just that, friends and relatives mostly.

A woman must be nursed into subsistence by love, where a man can become stronger by being hated." - from 'Cows in Art Class

Sweet Christ, you must know that a man will go further for any poem than for any woman ever born.

alone with everybody the flesh covers the bone and they put a mind in there and sometimes a soul, and the women break vases against the walls and them men drink too much and nobody finds the one but they keep looking crawling in and out of beds. flesh covers the bone and the flesh searches for more than flesh. there's no chance at all: we are all trapped by a singular fate. nobody ever finds the one. the city dumps fill the junkyards fill the madhouses fill the hospitals fill the graveyards fill nothing else fills.

Christmas poem to a man in jail hello Bill Abbott: I appreciate your passing around my books in jail there, my poems and stories. if I can lighten the load for some of those guys with my books, fine. but literature, you know, is difficult for the average man to assimilate (and for the unaverage man too); I don't like most poetry, for example, so I write mine the way I like to read it.

Experience can dull. With most men experience is a series of mistakes; the more experience you have the less you know.

Trouble and pain were what kept a man alive. Or trying to avoid trouble and pain. It was a full time job.

A man who can beat the horses can do anything he makes up his mind to do.

The poet, as a rule, is a half-man - a sissy, not a real person, and he is in no shape to lead real men in matters of blood, or courage.