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I Didn't Like Parties.i Didn't Know How To Dance And People Frightened Me, Especially People At Parties. They Attempted To Be Sexy And Gay And Witty And Although They Hoped They Were Good At It, They Weren 't. They Were Bad At It. Their Trying So Hard Only Made It Worse.

-Charles Bukowski

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I Didn't Like Parties.i

Charles Bukowski

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I Didn't Like Parties.i Didn't Know How To Dance And People Frightened Me, Especially People At Parties. They Attempted To Be Sexy And Gay And Witty And Although They Hoped They Were Good At It, They Weren 't. They Were Bad At It. Their Trying So Hard Only Made It Worse.

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I Lie As Truthfully As I Can.

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Great Art Is Horseshit, Buy Tacos.

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

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

Thought Provoking

Nothing Can Save You Except Writing. It Keeps The Walls From Failing.

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

I Was Drawn To All The Wrong Things: I Liked To Drink, I Was Lazy, I Didn't Have A God, Politics, Ideas, Ideals.

You Are Yesterday's Bouquet So Sadly Raided

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Some People Have Written That My Writing Has Helped Them Go On. It Has Helped Me Too. The Writing, The Roses, The 9 Cats.

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

Courage To Love

The Masses Are Always Wrong...wisdom Is Doing Everything The Crowd Does Not Do. All You Do Is Reverse The Totality Of Their Learning And You Have The Heaven They're Looking For.

We Are Here To Laugh At The Odds.

We Are Born Like This Into This Into These Carefully Mad Wars Into The Sight Of Broken Factory Windows Of Emptiness Into Bars Where People No Longer Speak To Each Other Into Fist Fights That End As Shootings And Knifings Born Into This Into Hospitals Which Are So Expensive That It’s Cheaper To Die Into Lawyers Who Charge So Much It’s Cheaper To Plead Guilty Into A Country Where The Jails Are Full And The Madhouses Closed Into A Place Where The Masses Elevate Fools Into Rich Heroes

Our Disappointment Sits Between Us.

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.

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I Walk Into The Kitchen, Look At The Typer Down There On The Floor. It's A Dirty Floor. It's A Dirty Typer That Types Dirty Stories

The Writing's Easy, It's The Living That Is Sometimes Difficult.

It’s So Easy To Be Easy—if You Let It.

Well, People Got Attatched. Once You Cut The Umbilical Cord They Attatched To The Other Things. Sight, Sound, Sex, Money, Mirages, Mothers, Masturbation, Murder, And Monday Morning Hangovers.

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)

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

I Enjoy The Bad Things That Are Said About Me. It Enhances Sales And Makes Me Feel Evil. I Don't Like To Feel Good 'cause I Am Good. But Evil? Yes. It Gives Me Another Dimension.

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

Invent Yourself And Then Reinvent Yourself.

Reinventing Yourself

When I Am Feeling Low All I Have To Do Is Watch My Cats And My Courage Returns

I Am With The Roots Of Flowers Entwined, Entombed Sending Up My Passionate Blossoms As A Flight Of Rockets And Argument; Wine Churls My Throat, Above Me Feet Walk Upon My Brain, Monkies Fall From The Sky Clutching Photographs Of The Planets, But I Seek Only Music And The Leisure Of My Pain

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.

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

I Was Fairly Poor But Most Of My Money Went For Wine And Classical Music. I Loved To Mix The Two Together.

I Sit Here Drunk Now. I Am A Series Of Small Victories And Large Defeats And I Am As Amazed As Any Other That I Have Gotten From There To Here Without Committing Murder Or Being Murdered; Without Having Ended Up In The Madhouse. As I Drink Alone Again Tonight My Soul Despite All The Past Agony Thanks All The Gods Who Were Not There For Me Then.

I Walked Around The Block Twice, Passed 200 People And Failed To See A Human Being.

Each Person Is Only Given So Many Evenings And Each Wasted Evening Is A Gross Violation Against The Natural Course Of Your Only Life.

I Wasn’t Lonely. I Experienced No Self-pity. I Was Just Caught Up In A Life In Which I Could ﬁnd No Meaning.

Existence Was Not Only Absurd, It Was Plain Hard Work. Think Of How Many Times You Put On Your Underwear In A Lifetime. It Was Appalling, It Was Disgusting, It Was Stupid.

Sex Can Sometimes Become The Most Horrible Of Tasks.

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

Anybody Can Be A Non-drunk. It Takes A Special Talent To Be A Drunk. It Takes Endurance. Endurance Is More Important Than Truth.

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.

We Are Hardly Ever As Strong As That Which We Create.

Why Do We Embroider Everything We Say With Special Emphasis When All We Really Need To Do Is Simply Say What Needs To He Said? Of Course The Fact Is That There Is Very Little That Needs To Be Said.

No Matter How Little A Man Has He Will Find That He Will Always Settle For Less.

The Masses Are Everywhere They Know How To Do Things: They Have Sane And Deadly Angers For Sane And Deadly Things.

Morals Were Restrictive, But They Were Grounded On Human Experience.

Human Experience

Food Is Good For The Nerves And The Spirit. Courage Comes From The Belly – All Else Is Desperation.

Each Man's Hell Is In A Different Place: Mine Is Just Up And Behind My Ruined Face.

I Had No Feeling For The Things So Many Others Needed.

And It Seems People Should Not Build Houses Anymore It Seems People Should Stop Working And Sit In Small Rooms On Second Floors Under Electric Lights Without Shades; It Seems There Is A Lot To Forget And A Lot Not To Do And In Drugstores, Markets, Bars, The People Are Tired, They Do Not Want To Move, And I Stand There At Night And Look Through This House And The House Does Not Want To Be Built

The Park Grass Looked Greener, The Park Benches Looked Better And The Flowers Were Trying Harder.

To Experience Real Agony Is Something Hard To Write About, Impossible To Understand While It Grips You; You're Frightened Out Of Your Wits, Can’t Sit Still, Move, Or Even Go Decently Insane.

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

Sexual Intercourse Is Kicking Death In The Ass While Singing.

I Heard An Airplane Passing Overhead. I Wished I Was On It.

I'm Very Clever At Hiding Poems Perhaps More Clever Than I Am At Writing Them.

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.

Never Trust A Man In A Jumpsuit

Never Trust A Man

There Are Policemen In The Street And Angels In The Clouds

I Hid In Bars, Because I Didn't Want To Hide In Factories.

I'm Too Careless. I Don't Put Out Enough Effort. I'm Tired.

If You Let Them Kill You, They Will

As A Child I Suppose I Was Not Quite Normal. My Happiest Times Were When I Was Left Alone In The House On A Saturday.

Almost Everybody Is Born A Genius And Buried An Idiot.

Thought Provoking

My Dear, Find What You Love And Let It Kill You. Let It Drain You Of Your All. Let It Cling Onto Your Back And Weigh You Down Into Eventual Nothingness. Let It Kill You And Let It Devour Your Remains. For All Things Will Kill You, Both Slowly And Fastly, But It’s Much Better To Be Killed By A Lover. ~ Falsely Yours

People Were Usually Much Better In Their Letters Than In Reality. They Were Much Like Poets In This Way.

The Night Kept Coming On In And There Was Nothing I Could Do.

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.

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.

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.

Some Moments Are Nice, Some Are Nicer, Some Are Even Worth Writing About.

Stay With The Beer. Beer Is Continuous Blood. A Continuous Lover.

I Should Think That Many Of Our Poets, The Honest Ones, Will Confess To Having No Manifesto. It Is A Painful Confession But The Art Of Poetry Carries Its Own Powers Without Having To Break Them Down Into Critical Listings. I Do Not Mean That Poetry Should Be Raffish And Irresponsible Clown Tossing Off Words Into The Void. But The Very Feeling Of A Good Poem Carries Its Own Reason For Being... Art Is Its Own Excuse, And It’s Either Art Or It’s Something Else. It’s Either A Poem Or A Piece Of Cheese.

If I'm An Ass, I Should Say So. If I Don't, Somebody Else Will. If I Say It First, That Disarms Them.

I Broke That Town In Half Like A Wooden Match.

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.

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