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I Could See The Road Ahead Of Me. I Was Poor And I Was Going To Stay Poor. But I Didn't Particularly Want Money. I Didn't Know What I Wanted. Yes, I Did. I Wanted Someplace To Hide Out, Someplace Where One Didn't Have To Do Anything. The Thought Of Being Something Didn't Only Appall Me, It Sickened Me . . . To Do Things, To Be Part Of Family Picnics, Christmas, The 4th Of July, Labor Day, Mother's Day . . . Was A Man Born Just To Endure Those Things And Then Die? I Would Rather Be A Dishwasher, Return Alone To A Tiny Room And Drink Myself To Sleep.

-Charles Bukowski

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I Could See The

Charles Bukowski

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I Could See The Road Ahead Of Me. I Was Poor And I Was Going To Stay Poor. But I Didn't Particularly Want Money. I Didn't Know What I Wanted. Yes, I Did. I Wanted Someplace To Hide Out, Someplace Where One Didn't Have To Do Anything. The Thought Of Being Something Didn't Only Appall Me, It Sickened Me . . . To Do Things, To Be Part Of Family Picnics, Christmas, The 4th Of July, Labor Day, Mother's Day . . . Was A Man Born Just To Endure Those Things And Then Die? I Would Rather Be A Dishwasher, Return Alone To A Tiny Room And Drink Myself To Sleep.

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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.

Be It Peace Or Happiness Let It Enfold You

You Have My Soul And I Have Your Money

Little Sun Little Moon Little Dog And A Little To Eat And A Little To Love And A Little To Live For In A Little Room Filled With Little Mice Who Gnaw And Dance And Run While I Sleep Waiting For A Little Death In The Middle Of A Little Morning In A Little City In A Little State My Little Mother Dead My Little Father Dead In A Little Cemetery Somewhere. I Have Only A Little Time To Tell You This: Watch Out For Little Death When He Comes Running But Like All The Billions Of Little Deaths It Will Finally Mean Nothing And Everything: All Your Little Tears Burning Like The Dove, Wasted.

Morning Night And Noon The Traffic Moves Through And The Murder And Treachery Of Friends And Lovers And All The People Move Through You. Pain Is The Joy Of Knowing The Unkindest Truth That Arrives Without Warning. Life Is Being Alone Death Is Being Alone. Even The Fools Weep Morning Night And Noon.

Some People Never Go Crazy, What Truly Horrible Lives They Must Live.

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.

I Remember Awakening One Morning And Finding Everything Smeared With The Color Of Forgotten Love.

Find What You Love And Let It Kill You. For All Things Will Kill You, Both Slowly And Fastly, But It’s Much Better To Be Killed By A Lover.

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.

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.

I Wasn't A Misanthrope And I Wasn't A Misogynist But I Liked Being Alone. It Felt Good To Sit Alone In A Small Space And Smoke And Drink. I Had Always Been Good Company For Myself.

Real Loneliness Is Not Necessarily Limited To When You Are Alone.

There's No Light At The End Of The Tunnel, There Isn't Even A Tunnel. The Best Thing I Can Do Is Get Drunk And Listen To Classical Music. Or Sleep And Wait For Death To Get Closer. Leaving This Will Not Be A Horrible Thing. Yet I'm Glad, Somehow, That I Threw My Words In The Air: Confetti, Celebrating Nothing.

When You Drank The World Was Still Out There, But For The Moment It Didn’t Have You By The Throat.

I Would Say That Mickey Mouse Has A Greater Influence On The American Public Than Shakespeare, Milton, Dante, Rabelais, Shostakovitch, Lenin, And/or Van Gogh. Which Says 'what?' About The American Public. Disneyland Remains The Central Attraction Of Southern California, But The Graveyard Remains Our Reality.

I Am Ashamed To Be A Member Of The Human Race But I Don't Want To Add Any More To That Shame, I Want To Scrape A Little Of It Off.

I Wasn’t Going Anywhere And Neither Was The Rest Of The World. We Were All Just Hanging Around Waiting To Die And Meanwhile Doing Little Things To Fill The Space. Some Of Use Weren’t Even Doing Little Things. We Were Vegetables.

Don't Ever Write A Novel Unless It Hurts Like A Hot Turd Coming Out.

There's Nothing Else As Pleasant As Being Unpleasant When There's Nothing Else To Do, And There's Usually Nothing Else To Do.

My Ambition Is Handicapped By Laziness

There's Nothing To Stop A Man From Writing Unless That Man Stops Himself. If A Man Truly Desires To Write, Then He Will. Rejection And Ridicule Will Only Strengthen Him. And The Longer He Is Held Back The Stronger He Will Become, Like A Mass Of Rising Water Against A Dam. There Is No Losing In Writing, It Will Make Your Toes Laugh As You Sleep, It Will Make You Stride Like A Tiger, It Will Fire The Eye And Put You Face To Face With Death. You Will Die A Fighter, You Will Be Honored In Hell. The Luck Of The Word. Go With It, Send It.

There's A Bluebird In My Heart That Wants To Get Out But I'm Too Tough For Him, I Say, Stay In There, I'm Not Going To Let Anybody See You.

What A Woman Wants Is A Reaction. What A Man Wants Is A Woman.

If You Want To Know Where God Is, Ask A Drunk.

You Just Rebel Against Everything. How Are You Going To Survive? I Don't Know. I'm Already Tired.

It Was Like Any Other Relationship, There Was Jealousy On Both Sides, There Were Split-ups And Reconciliations. There Were Also Fragmented Moments Of Great Peace And Beauty. I Often Tried To Get Away From Her And She Tried To Get Away From Me But It Was Difficult: Cupid, In His Strange Way, Was Really There.

Pretty Words, As Pretty Women, Wrinkle Up And Die.

Sometimes I Hate You," She Said.

Love Is A Fog That Burns With The First Daylight Of Reality.

Success Is Always Dangerous. It Can Make An Asshole Out Of Anybody.

The Nine-to-five Is One Of The Greatest Atrocities Sprung Upon Mankind. You Give Your Life To A Function That Doesn't Interest You. This Situation So Repelled Me That I Was Driven To Drink, Starvation, And Mad Females, Simply As An Alternative.

We Only Asked For Leopards To Guard Our Thinning Dreams.

‎"she’ Mad But She’ Magic. There’ No Lie In Her Fire.

I Hope That Death Contains Less Than This.

Writing About A Writer's Block Is Better Than Not Writing At All

Nobody Can Save You But Yourself And You’re Worth Saving. It’s A War Not Easily Won But If Anything Is Worth Winning Then This Is It.

I Give You Soul. I Give You Wisdom And Light And Music And A Bit Of Laughter. Also, I Am The World's Greatest Horseplayer.

It's Better To Do A Dull Thing With Style Than A Dangerous Thing Without It.

I Will Remember The Kisses, Our Lips Raw With Love, And How You Gave Me Everything You Had And How I Offered You What Was Left Of Me.

The Human Heart, As Of Course We All Know Is Essentially Good

The World Is Full Of Boring, Identical And Mindless People.

I Like To Change Liquor Stores Frequently Because The Clerks Got To Know Your Habits If You Went In Night And Day And Bought Huge Quantities. I Could Feel Them Wondering Why I Wasn't Dead Yet And It Made Me Uncomfortable. They Probably Weren't Thinking Any Such Thing, But Then A Man Gets Paranoid When He Has 300 Hangovers A Year.

Your Parents Don't Give You Much Love, Do They?' 'i Don't Need That Stuff,' I Told Her. 'henry, Everybody Needs Love.' 'i Don't Need Anything.' 'you Poor Boy.

Sundays Kill More People Than Bombs.

There Is Only One Place To Write And That Is Alone At A Typewriter. The Writer Who Has To Go Into The Streets Is A Writer Who Does Not Know The Streets. . . When You Leave Your Typewriter You Leave Your Machine Gun And The Rats Come Pouring Through.

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.

After Dinner Or Lunch Or Whatever It Was -- With My Crazy 12-hour Night I Was No Longer Sure What Was What -- I Said, "look, Baby, I'm Sorry, But Don't You Realize That This Job Is Driving Me Crazy? Look, Let's Give It Up. Let's Just Lay Around And Make Love And Take Walks And Talk A Little. Let's Go To The Zoo. Let's Look At Animals. Let's Drive Down And Look At The Ocean. It's Only 45 Minutes. Let's Play Games In The Arcades. Let's Go To The Races, The Art Museum, The Boxing Matches. Let's Have Friends. Let's Laugh. This Kind Of Life Like Everybody Else's Kind Of Life: It's Killing Us.

You've Got To Burn Straight Up And Down And Then Maybe Sidewise For A While And Have Your Guts Scrambled By A Bully And The Demonic Ladies, You've Got To Run Along The Edge Of Madness Teetering, You've Got To Starve Like A Winter Alleycat, You've Go To Live With The Imbecility Of At Least A Dozen Cities, Then Maybe Maybe Maybe You Might Know Where You Are For A Tiny Blinking Moment.

Human Relationships Are Strange. I Mean, You Are With One Person A While, Eating And Sleeping And Living With Them, Loving Them, Talking To Them, Going Places Together, And Then It Stops.

Writers Are Desperate People And When They Stop Being Desperate They Stop Being Writers.

I Didn't Feel That Way About It. I Had Been Playing With Death For Some Time. I Can't Say We Were The Best Of Friends But We Were Well Acquainted.

She Was Consumed By 3 Simple Things: Drink, Despair, Loneliness; And 2 More: Youth And Beauty

There's No Way I Can Stop Writing, It's A Form Of Insanity.

Sometimes You Climb Out Of Bed In The Morning And You Think, I'm Not Going To Make It, But You Laugh Inside — Remembering All The Times You've Felt That Way.

An Early Taste Of Death Is Not Necessarily A Bad Thing.

You Begin Saving The World By Saving One Man At A Time; All Else Is Grandiose Romanticism Or Politics.

Beware Of Those Who Seek Constant Crowds; They Are Nothing Alone.

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.

My Youth, One Time, That Time I Knew Even Through The Nothingness, It Was A Celebration Of Something Not To Do But Only Know.

Banion Wondered Which Was Worse - Being Sodomized By Aliens, Or Having To Sit Through Two Hours Of Charles Ives.

And When Love Came To Us Twice And Lied To Us Twice We Decided To Never Love Again That Was Fair Fair To Us And Fair To Love Itself. We Ask For No Mercy Or No Miracles; We Are Strong Enough To Live And To Die And To Kill Flies, Attend The Boxing Matches, Go To The Racetrack, Live On Luck And Skill, Get Alone, Get Alone Often, And If You Can't Sleep Alone Be Careful Of The Words You Speak In Your Sleep; And Ask For No Mercy No Miracles; And Don't Forget: Time Is Meant To Be Wasted, Love Fails And Death Is Useless.

Life's As Kind As You Let It Be.

Are People Crazy? People Waited All Their Lives. They Waited To Live, They Waited To Die. They Waited In Line To Buy Toilet Paper. They Waited In Line For Money. And If They Didn't Have Any Money They Waited In Longer Lines. You Waited To Go To Sleep And Then You Waited To Awaken. You Waited To Get Married And You Waited To Get Divorced. You Waited For It To Rain, You Waited For It To Stop. You Waited To Eat And Then You Waited To Eat Again. You Waited In A Shrink's Office With A Bunch Of Psychos And You Wondered If You Were One.

There's A Bluebird In My Heart That Wants To Get Out.

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.

A Spark Can Set A Whole Forest On Fire. Just A Spark. Save It.

I Felt Like Crying But Nothing Came Out. It Was Just A Sort Of Sad Sickness, Sick Sad, When You Can't Feel Any Worse. I Think You Know It. I Think Everybody Knows It Now And Then. But I Think I Have Known It Pretty Often, Too Often.

Dying In A A War Never Stopped Wars From Happening.

Nobody Can Save You But Yourself. You Will Be Put Again And Again Into Nearly Impossible Situations. They Will Attempt Again And Again Through Subterfuge, Guise And Force To Make You Submit, Quit And/or Die Quietly Inside. Nobody Can Save You But Yourself

Impossible Situations

I Was Laying In Bed One Night And I Thought 'i'll Just Quit - To Hell With It.' And Another Little Voice Inside Me Said 'don't Quit - Save That Tiny Little Ember Of Spark.' And Never Give Them That Spark Because As Long As You Have That Spark, You Can Start The Greatest Fire Again.

I'm Only Interested In Poetry.

I Don’t Understand People, Never Will. It Looks Like I Got To Travel Pretty Much Alone.

It’s Nice Enough To Make A Man Weep, But I Don’t Weep, Do You?

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.

My Beerdrunk Soul Is Sadder Than All The Dead Christmas Trees Of The World.

Before You Kill Something Make Sure You Have Something Better To Replace It With.

…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.

I Knew I Was Strong, And Maybe Like They Said, "crazy." But I Had This Feeling Inside Of Me That Something Real Was There.

I Think That The World Should Be Full Of Cats And Full Of Rain, That's All, Just Cats And Rain, Rain And Cats, Very Nice, Good Night.

Disneyland Remains The Central Attraction Of Southern California, But The Graveyard Remains Our Reality.

Humanity, You Never Had It To Begin With.

As We Live We All Get Caught And Torn By Various Traps. Nobody Escapes Them. Some Even Live With Them. The Idea Is To Realize That A Trap Is A Trap. If You Are In One And You Don't Realize It, Then You're Finished.

We Are Here To Laugh At The Odds And Live Our Lives So Well That Death Will Tremble To Take Us.

It Seemed To Me That I Had Never Met Another Person On Earth As Discouraging To My Happiness As My Father. And It Appeared That I Had The Same Effect Upon Him.

Our Disappointment Sits Between Us.

Great Books Are The Ones We Need

A Good Book Can Make An Almost Impossible Existence, Liveable ( From 'the Luck Of The Word' )

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.

Any Asshole Can Chase A Skirt, Art Takes Discipline.

Death Is Nothing, Brother, It's Life That's Hard

There Is Something About Writing Poetry That Brings A Man Close To The Cliff's Edge.

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.

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.

We're All Going To Die, All Of Us, What A Circus! That Alone Should Make Us Love Each Other But It Doesn't. We Are Terrorized And Flattened By Trivialities, We Are Eaten Up By Nothing.

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.

And Love Was Lightning And Remembrance

Style Is The Answer To Everything. A Fresh Way To Approach A Dull Or Dangerous Thing

And Love Is A Word Used Too Much And Much Too Soon.

Those Who Escape Hell However Never Talk About It And Nothing Much Bothers Them After That

Find What You Love And Let It Kill You.

Soon I'll Finish This 5th Of Puerto Rican Rum. In The Morning I'll Vomit And Shower, Drive Back In, Have A Sandwich By 1 P.m., Be Back In My Room By 2, Stretched On The Bed, Waiting For The Phone To Ring, Not Answering, My Holiday Is An Evasion, Mt Reasoning Is Not.

You Boys Can Keep Your Virgins Give Me Hot Old Women In High Heels With Asses That Forgot To Get Old.

I Can't Blame Her. But Wonder Why She's Here With Me? Where Are The Other Guys? How Can You Be Lucky? Having Someone The Others Have Abandoned?

Her Violence Frightened Me. She Always Claimed That I Was The Jealous One, And I Was Often Jealous, But When I Saw Things Working Against Me I Simply Became Disgusted And Withdrew. Lydia Was Different. She Reacted. She Was The Head Cheerleader At The Game Of Violence.

A Woman Has To Have Something On Or There's Nothing To Take Off.

Simplicity Is Always The Secret, To A Profound Truth, To Doing Things, To Writing, To Painting. Life Is Profound In Its Simplicity

My Body Gnaws At Me From One Side And My Spirit Gnaws At Me From The Other.

It's Possible To Love A Human Being If You Don't Know Them Too Well.

When You Clean Up A City, You Destroy It.

Dogs And Angels Are Not Very Far Apart

Censorship Is The Tool Of Those Who Have The Need To Hide Actualities From Themselves And From Others. Their Fear Is Only Their Inability To Face What Is Real, And I Can't Vent Any Anger Against Them. I Only Feel This Appalling Sadness. Somewhere, In Their Upbringing, They Were Shielded Against The Total Facts Of Our Existence. They Were Only Taught To Look One Way When Many Ways Exist.

I Don't Know About Other People, But When I Wake Up In The Morning And Put My Shoes On, I Think, Jesus Christ, Now What?

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.

Trouble And Pain Were What Kept A Man Alive. Or Trying To Avoid Trouble And Pain. It Was A Full Time Job.

Escape From The Black Widow Spider Is A Miracle As Great As Art. What A Web She Can Weave Slowly Drawing You To Her She'll Embrace You Then When She's Satisfied She'll Kill You Still In Her Embrace And Suck The Blood From You.

If You're Going To Try, Go All The Way. There Is No Other Feeling Like That. You Will Be Alone With The Gods, And The Nights Will Flame With Fire. You Will Ride Life Straight To Perfect Laughter. It's The Only Good Fight There Is.

There's A Bluebird In My Heart That Wants To Get Out But I'm Too Clever, I Only Let Him Out At Night Sometimes When Everybody's Asleep. I Say, I Know That You're There, So Don't Be Sad. Then I Put Him Back, But He's Singing A Little In There, I Haven't Quite Let Him Die And We Sleep Together Like That With Our Secret Pact And It's Nice Enough To Make A Man Weep, But I Don't Weep, Do You?

I Was Born To Hustle Roses Down The Avenue Of The Dead.

A Man Who Can Beat The Horses Can Do Anything He Makes Up His Mind To Do.

The People Are The Biggest Horror Show On Earth, Have Been For Centuries.

If Something Burns Your Soul With Purpose And Desire, It’s Your Duty To Be Reduced To Ashes By It. Any Other Form Of Existence Will Be Yet Another Dull Book In The Library Of Life.

People Run From Rain But Sit In Bathtubs Full Of Water.

We're All Going To Die, All Of Us, What A Circus!

Unless The Sun Inside You Is Burning Your Gut, Don't Do It

To Create Art Means To Be Crazy Alone Forever.

You Fall Into The Mirror, Come Through The Other Side Staring At A Lightbulb.

Purple Does Something Strange To Me

We Don’t Even Ask Happiness, Just A Little Less Pain.

I Can't Think Of Any Poet-recluses Outside Of One Dead Jeffers. [robinson Jeffers] The Rest Of Them Want To Slobber Over Each Other And Hug Each Other. It Appears To Me That I Am The Last Of The Poet-recluses.

I Think That Everything Should Be Made Available To Everybody, And I Mean Lsd, Cocaine, Codeine, Grass, Opium, The Works. Nothing On Earth Available To Any Man Should Be Confiscated And Made Unlawful By Other Men In More Seemingly Powerful And Advantageous Positions.

The Crazy Ones Only Laugh When There Is No Reason To Laugh.

Never Trust A Man In A Jumpsuit

Never Trust A Man

The Artist," An Ancient Sage Had Once Said, "is Always Sitting On The Doorsteps Of The Rich.

When The Phone Rings I Too Would Like To Hear Words That Might Ease Some Of This.

But As God Said, Crossing His Legs, I See Where I Have Made Plenty Of Poets But Not So Very Much Poetry.

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.

To Do A Dull Thing With Style-now That's What I Call Art.

Thought Provoking

And There I Was, 225 Pounds, Perpetually Lost And Confused, Short Legs, Ape-like Upper Body, All Chest, No Neck, Head Too Large, Blurred Eyes, Hair Uncombed, 6 Feet Of Geek, Waiting For Her.

But My Whole Life Has Been A Matter Of Fighting For One Simple Hour To Do What I Want To Do. There Was Always Something Getting In The Way Of My Getting To Myself.

You Are Thirty Minutes Late." "yes." "would You Be Thirty Minutes Late To A Wedding Or A Funeral?" "no." "why Not, Pray Tell?" "well, If The Funeral Was Mine I'd Have To Be On Time. If The Wedding Was Mine It Would Be My Funeral.

Courts Are Places Where The Ending Is Written First And All That Precedes Is Simply Vaudeville.

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.

I Have No Time For Things That Have No Soul.

What's Genius? I Don't Know But I Do Know That The Difference Between A Madman And A Professional Is That A Pro Does As Well As He Can Within What He Has Set Out To Do And A Madman Does Exceptionally Well At What He Can't Help Doing.

It Was Like The Beginning Of Life And Laughter. It Was The Real Meaning Of The Sun

Bad Writing's Like Bad Women: There's Just Not Much You Can Do About It

If I Bet On Humanity, I'd Never Cash A Ticket.

In The Morning It Was Morning And I Was Still Alive.

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.

First Paycheck I Get, I Thought, I'm Going To Get Myself A Room Near The Downtown L.a. Public Library.

The Shortest Distance Between Two Points Is Often Unbearable.

Let It Die. Let There Be A New Beginning. It’s Awful. Goodnight.

Belane, Are You Nuts?" Who Knows? Insanity Is Comparative. Who Sets The Norm?

You Can Steal My Women But Don't Play With My Whiskey.

When I Begin To Doubt My Ability To Work The Word, I Simply Read Another Writer And Know I Have Nothing To Worry About. My Contest Is Only With Myself, To Do It Right, With Power, And Force, And Delight, And Gamble.

Slavery Was Never Abolished, It Was Only Extended To Include All The Colors.

I Am A Series Of Small Victories And Large Defeats.

Small Victories

A Woman Is A Full Time Job. You Have To Choose Your Profession.

There Will Always Be Something To Ruin Our Lives, It All Depends On What Or Which Finds Us First. We Are Always Ripe And Ready To Be Taken.

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.

I Hated You When It Would Have Taken Less Courage To Love.

Courage To Love

I've Learned To Feel Good When I Feel Good. It's Better To Be Driven Around In A Red Porsche Than To Own One. The Luck Of The Fool Is Inviolate.

I Dunno," I Said, "but I Have An Idea That People Who Don't Think Too Much Tend To Look Younger Longer

If I Hadn't Been A Drunkard, I Probably Would Have Committed Suicide Long Ago.

I Was So Thin I Could Slice Bread With My Shoulderblades, Only I Seldom Had Bread.

What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through The Fire

Well, I Don't Know About You But I'm Going To Try Everything! War, Women, Travel, Marriage, Children, The Works. [...]. I Want To Know About Things, What Makes Them Work!

I Thought You Were Sane," I Said, "but You're Just As Crazy As The Rest Of Them.

I Remember When Each 4th Lot Was Vacant And Overgrown, And The Landlord Only Go This Rent When You Had It, And Each Day Was Clear And Good And Each Moment Was Full Of Promise.

Women: I Liked The Colors Of Their Clothing; The Way They Walked; The Cruelty In Some Faces; Now And Then The Almost Pure Beauty In Another Face, Totally And Enchantingly Female. They Had It Over Us: They Planned Much Better And Were Better Organized. While Men Were Watching Professional Football Or Drinking Beer Or Bowling, They, The Women, Were Thinking About Us, Concentrating, Studying, Deciding - Whether To Accept Us, Discard Us, Exchange Us, Kill Us Or Whether Simply To Leave Us. In The End It Hardly Mattered; No Matter What They Did, We Ended Up Lonely And Insane.

Don't Wait For The Good Woman. She Doesn't Exist. There Are Women Who Can Make You Feel More With Their Bodies And Their Souls But These Are The Exact Women Who Will Turn The Knife Into You Right In Front Of The Crowd.

I Tell You Such Fine Music Waits In The Shadows Of Hell.

Everything Is Beautiful. We Have All This Beauty In The World And All We Have To Do Is Reach Out And Touch It, It Is All There And All Ours For The Taking." -- Cecilia To Henry Chinaski, Liberty Taken Changing Past Tense To Present Tense (173)

Experience Can Dull. With Most Men Experience Is A Series Of Mistakes; The More Experience You Have The Less You Know.

An Intellectual Says A Simple Thing In A Hard Way. An Artist Says A Hard Thing In A Simple Way.

There Are Times When Those Eyes Inside Your Brain Stare Back At You.

I Was Their Bar Freak, They Needed Me To Make Themselves Feel Better. Just Like, At Times, I Needed That Graveyard.

Goodness Can Be Found Sometimes In The Middle Of Hell.

Knowledge Without Follow-through Is Worse Than No Knowledge.

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 Impossibility Of Being Human All Too Human This Breathing In And Out Out And In These Punks These Cowards These Champions These Mad Dogs Of Glory Moving This Little Bit Of Light Toward Us Impossibly.

Angels, We Have Grown Apart.

Hate Contains Truth. Beauty Is A Facade.

The Wisdom To Quit Is All We Have Left.

And Don't Forget: Time Is Meant To Be Wasted, Love Fails And Death Is Useless.

The Tigers Have Found Me And I Do Not Care.

If It Doesn't Come Bursting Out Of You In Spite Of Everything, Don't Do It. Unless It Comes Unasked Out Of Your Heart And Your Mind And Your Mouth And Your Gut, Don't Do It.

Learn, He Says, That There Will Be Hours, Days And Months Ahead Of Feeling Absolutely Terrible And Nothing Can Change That; Neither New Girlfriends, Health Professionals, Changes Of Diet, Dope, Humility, Or God.

... To Die On A Kitchen Floor At 7 O'clock In The Morning While Other People Are Frying Eggs Is Not So Rough Unless It Happens To You.

Meanwhile The 3 A.m. Drunks Of The World Would Lay In Their Beds, Trying In Vain To Sleep, And Deserving That Rest, If They Could Find It.

Drinking Is An Emotional Thing. It Joggles You Out Of The Standardism Of Everyday Life, Out Of Everything Being The Same. It Yanks You Out Of Your Body And Your Mind And Throws You Against The Wall. I Have The Feeling That Drinking Is A Form Of Suicide Where You're Allowed To Return To Life And Begin All Over The Next Day. It's Like Killing Yourself, And Then You're Reborn. I Guess I've Lived About Ten Or Fifteen Thousand Lives Now.

I Often Carry Things To Read So That I Will Not Have To Look At The People.

It Will Rain All This Night And We Will Sleep Transfixed By The Dark Water As Our Blood Runs Through Our Fragile Life.

I Carry Death In My Left Pocket. Sometimes I Take It Out And Talk To It: "hello, Baby, How You Doing? When You Coming For Me? I'll Be Ready.

We Must.. We Must Bring Our Own Light To The Darkness

Things Get Bad For All Of Us, Almost Continually, And What We Do Under The Constant Stress Reveals Who/what We Are.

I Never Met Another Man I'd Rather Be. And Even If That's A Delusion, It's A Lucky One.

I'll Get Back To The Whores And The Horses And The Booze, While There's Time.

Few Beautiful Women Were Willing To Indicate In Public That They Belonged To Someone. I Had Known Enough Women To Realize This. I Accepted Them For What They Were And Love Came Hard And Very Seldom. When It Did It Was Usually For The Wrong Reasons. One Simply Became Tired Of Holding Back Love And Let It Go Because It Needed Some Place To Go. Then, Usually, There Was Trouble.

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Michael Michele

Robert A. Brady

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