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2 P.m. Beer Nothing Matters But Flopping On A Mattress With Cheap Dreams And A Beer As The Leaves Die And The Horses Die And The Landladies Stare In The Halls; Brisk The Music Of Pulled Shades, A Last Man's Cave In An Eternity Of Swarm And Explosion; Nothing But The Dripping Sink, The Empty Bottle, Euphoria, Youth Fenced In, Stabbed And Shaven, Taught Words Propped Up To Die.

-Charles Bukowski

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2 P.m. Beer Nothing

Charles Bukowski

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2 P.m. Beer Nothing Matters But Flopping On A Mattress With Cheap Dreams And A Beer As The Leaves Die And The Horses Die And The Landladies Stare In The Halls; Brisk The Music Of Pulled Shades, A Last Man's Cave In An Eternity Of Swarm And Explosion; Nothing But The Dripping Sink, The Empty Bottle, Euphoria, Youth Fenced In, Stabbed And Shaven, Taught Words Propped Up To Die.

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

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.

That Was All A Man Needed: Hope. It Was Lack Of Hope That Discouraged A Man.

More Often Than Not Democratic Law Works To The Advantage Of The Few Even Though The Many Have Voted; This, Of Course, Is Because The Few Have Told Them How To Vote.

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.

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.

Dear Child, I Only Did To You What The Sparrow Did To You; I Am Old When It Is Fashionable To Be Young; I Cry When It Is Fashionable To Laugh. I Hated You When It Would Have Taken Less Courage To Love.

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.

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.

I Would Give Anything For A Female's Hand On Me Tonight. They Soften A Man And Then Leave Him Listening To The Rain.

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.

The Laughing Heart Your Life Is Your Life Don’t Let It Be Clubbed Into Dank Submission. Be On The Watch. There Are Ways Out. There Is A Light Somewhere. It May Not Be Much Light But It Beats The Darkness. Be On The Watch. The Gods Will Offer You Chances. Know Them. Take Them. You Can’t Beat Death But You Can Beat Death In Life, Sometimes. And The More Often You Learn To Do It, The More Light There Will Be. Your Life Is Your Life. Know It While You Have It. You Are Marvelous The Gods Wait To Delight In You.

Knowledge Is Knowing As Little As Possible.

Knowing Who You Are

Nothing's News. It's The Same Old Thing In Disguise. Only One Thing Comes Without A Disguise And You Only See It Once, Or Maybe Never. Like Getting Hit By A Freight Train. Makes Us Realize That All Our Moaning About Long Lost Girls In Gingham Dresses Is Not So Important After All.

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.

My Objection To War Was Not That I Had To Kill Somebody Or Be Killed Senselessly, That Hardly Mattered. What I Objected To Was To Be Denied The Right To Sit In A Small Room And Starve And Drink Cheap Wine And Go Crazy In My Own Way And At My Own Leisure.

Love Is All Right For Those Who Can Handle The Psychic Overload. It's Like Trying To Carry A Full Garbage Can On Your Back Over A Rushing River Of Piss.

And I Said To Myself That He Was The First Thing That I Had Ever Missed In My Life.

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.

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

It’s Never Quite Right, All The Things We Are Taught, All The Loves We Chase, All The Deaths We Die, All The Lives We Live.

It's 4:30 In The Morning, It's Always 4:30 In The Morning.

One More Creature Dizzy With Love

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.

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.

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

I Suppose Like Others I Have Come Through Fire And Sword, Love Gone Wrong, Head-on Crashes, Drunk At Sea, And I Have Listened To The Simple Sound Of Water Running In Tubs And Wished To Drown

I Got Up And Walked Back To My Roominghouse. The Moonlight Was Bright. My Footsteps Echoed In The Empty Street And It Sounded As If Somebody Was Following Me, I Looked Around. I Was Mistaken. I Was Quite Alone.

I Knew Exactly What I Was Doing: I Was Doing Nothing. Because I Knew There Was Nothing To Do.

The Sea Is Made Of Blood

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.

All A Guy Needed Was A Chance. Somebody Was Alway Controlling Who Got A Chance And Who Didn't.

I've Never Met Another Man I'd Rather Be.

The Pest, In A Sense, Is A Very Superior Being To Us: He Knows Where To Find Us And How--usually In The Bath Or In Sexual Intercourse Or Asleep.

There Are Policemen In The Street And Angels In The Clouds

What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through The Fire

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

The Human Race Had Always Disgusted Me. Essentially, What Made Them Disgusting Was The Family-relationship Illness, Which Included Marriage, Exchange Of Power And Aid, Which Neighborhood, Your District, Your City, Your County, Your State, Your Nation-everybody Grabbing Each Other's Assholes In The Honeycomb Of Survival Out Of A Fear-animalistic Stupidity.

Sometimes I Feel As If We Are All Trapped In A Movie. We Know Our Lines, Where To Walk, How To Act, Only There Is No Camera. Yet, We Can't Break Out Of The Movie. And It's A Bad One.

Angels, We Have Grown Apart.

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.

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!

Lighting New Cigarettes, Pouring More Drinks. It Has Been A Beautiful Fight. Still Is.

The Blankets Had Fallen Off And I Stared Down At Her White Back, The Shoulder Blades Sticking Out As If They Wanted To Grow Into Wings, Poke Through That Skin. Little Blades. She Was Helpless.

I'll Use The Knives For Spreading Jam, And The Gas To Warm My Greying Love.

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.

I Met A Genius On The Train Today About 6 Years Old, He Sat Beside Me And As The Train Ran Down Along The Coast We Came To The Ocean And Then He Looked At Me And Said, It’s Not Pretty.

Turgenev Was A Very Serious Fellow But He Could Make Me Laugh Because A Truth First Encountered Can Be Very Funny. When Someone Else's Truth Is The Same As Your Truth, And He Seems To Be Saying It Just For You, That's Great.

Knowledge Without Follow-through Is Worse Than No Knowledge.

Love Is A Form Of Prejudice. I Have Too Many Other Prejudices.

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

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 Way To Create Art Is To Burn And Destroy Ordinary Concepts And To Substitute Them With New Truths That Run Down From The Top Of The Head And Out Of The Heart

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.

There Still Might Be A Place For Us Somewhere.

Why Did I Come Here? I Thought. Why Is It Always Only A Matter Of Choosing Between Something Bad And Something Worse?

Finally There Is Nothing Here For Death To Take Away.

I Wish To Weep But Sorrow Is Stupid. I Wish To Believe But Belief Is A Graveyard.

There Is A Place In The Heart That Will Never Be Filled A Space And Even During The Best Moments And The Greatest Times Times We Will Know It We Will Know It More Than Ever There Is A Place In The Heart That Will Never Be Filled And We Will Wait And Wait In That Space.

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

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

And Even The Trees We Walked Under Seemed Less Than Trees And More Like Everything Else.

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

Even The Stove And The Refrigerator Looked Human, I Mean Good Human - They Seemed To Have Arms And Voices And They Said, Hang Around, Kid, It's Good Here, It Can Be Very Good Here.

How Are His Poems?" "he's Not As Good As He Thinks He Is, But Then Most Of Us Feel That Way.

I've Never Been Lonely. I've Been In A Room... I've Felt Suicidal, I've Been Depressed. I've Felt Awful ... Awful Beyond All , But I Never Felt That One Other Person Could Enter That Room And Cure What Was Bothering Me...or That Any Number Of People Could Enter That Room. In Other Words, Loneliness Is Something I've Never Been Bothered With Because I've Always Had This Terrible Itch For Solitude.

Sweet Christ, You Must Know That A Man Will Go Further For Any Poem Than For Any Woman Ever Born.

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.

Fay Had A Spot Of Blood On The Left Side Of Her Mouth And I Took A Wet Cloth And Wiped It Off. Women Were Meant To Suffer; No Wonder They Asked For Constant Declarations Of Love.

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.

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

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.

The History Of Melancholia Includes All Of Us.

You Have My Soul And I Have Your Money

I Don't Know If This Is True To You But For Me Sometimes It Gets So Bad That Anything Else Say Like Looking At A Bird On An Overhead Power Line Seems As Great As A Beethoven Symphony. Then You Forget It And You're Back Again.

I Took No Pride In My Solitude; But I Was Dependent On It. The Darkness Of The Room Was Like Sunlight To Me.

Drinking Is An Emotional Thing. It Joggles You Out Of The Standardism Of Everyday Life, Out Of Everything Being The Same.

We Waste Days Like Mad Blackbirds And Pray For Alcoholic Nightsour Silk-sick Human Smiles Wrap Around Us Like Somebody Else's Confetti

Whiskey Makes The Heart Beat Faster But It Sure Doesn't Help The Mind And Isn't It Funny How You Can Ache Just From The Deadly Drone Of Existence?

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

T Was Almost Disappointing Because It Seemed When Stress And Madness Were Eliminated From My Daily Life There Wasn't Much Left You Could Depend On.

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

They Looked As If Nothing Had Ever Touched Them--all Well-mothered, Protected, With A Soft Sheen Of Contentment. None Of Them Had Ever Been In Jail, Or Worked Hard With Their Hands, Or Even Gotten A Traffic Ticket. Skimmed-milk Jollies, The Whole Bunch.

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

Thought Provoking

I Was An Agnostic. Agnostics Didn't Have Much To Argue About.

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.

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.

Modern Women ... They Don't Sew Your Pockets ... Forget That.

Don't Be Ashamed Of Anything; I Guess God Meant It All Like Locks On Doors.

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.

Humanity, You Never Had It From The Beginning." That Was My Motto.

I Feel Strangely Normal.

Drink From The Well Of Yourself And Begin Again.

Dying Should Come Easy: Like A Freight Train You Don't Hear When Your Back Is Turned.

I Was Only Kidding About The Hundred," She Says. Oh," I Say, "what Will It Cost Me?" She Lights Her Cigarette With My Lighter And Looks At Me Through The Flame: Her Eyes Tell Me. Look," I Say, "i Don't Think I Can Ever Pay That Price Again.

A Dry Period For Me Means Perhaps Going Two Or Three Nights Without Writing. I Probably Have Dry Periods But I'm Not Aware Of Them And I Go On Writing, Only The Writing Probably Isn't Much Good.

People Just Weren't Interesting. Maybe They Weren't Supposed To Be. But Animals, Birds, Even Insects Were. I Couldn't Understand It.

Lsd, Yeah, The Big Parade – Everybody's Doin' It Now. Take Lsd, Then You Are A Poet, An Intellectual. What A Sick Mob. I Am Building A Machine Gun In My Closet Now To Take Out As Many Of Them As I Can Before They Get Me.

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 Is Possible To Be Truly Mad And To Still Exist Upon Scraps Of Life.

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

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.

American Women Drove Hard Bargains And The Ended Up Looking The Worst For It. The Few Natural American Women Left Were Mostly In Texas And Louisiana.

I Seldom Know What I'm Going To Write When I Sit Down. There Isn't Much Agony And Sweat Of The Human Spirit Involved In Doing It. The Writing's Easy, It's The Living That Is Sometimes Difficult.

Pain Is Strange. A Cat Killing A Bird, A Car Accident, A Fire.... Pain Arrives, Bang, And There It Is, It Sits On You. It's Real. And To Anybody Watching, You Look Foolish. Like You've Suddenly Become An Idiot. There's No Cure For It Unless You Know Somebody Who Understands How You Feel, And Knows How To Help.

It Was Too Much. The Comfortable People Made Comfortable Jokes About Weather And Things But I Sat Mostly Silent Saying A Word Or So When Necessary A Word Or So Trying To Hide From Them The Fact That I Was A Fool And Feeling Terrible And I Was Numb, Numb Again, Numb Again Again And Again, Numbness And Pain Swelling In Me.

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

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.

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

You Have To Lay Down In The Center Of The Action Lay Down And Wait Until It Charges Then You Must Get Up Face It Get It Before It Gets You The Whole Process Is More Shy Than Vulnerable So Lay Down And Wait Sometimes It's Ten Minutes Sometimes It's Years Sometimes It Never Arrives But You Can't Rush It Push It There's No Way To Cheat Or Get A Jump On It You Have To Lay Down Lay Down And Wait Like An Animal .

For Each Joan Of Arc There Is A Hitler Perched At The Other End Of The Teeter-totter.

There's No Clarity. There Was Never Meant To Be Clarity.

Poetry Is What Happens When Nothing Else Can.

We Are Like Roses That Have Never Bothered To Bloom When We Should Have Bloomed And It Is As If The Sun Has Become Disgusted With Waiting

Don't Wait For The Good Woman. She Doesn't Exist.

Daddy,' My Mother Asked, 'aren’t We Going To Run Out Of Gas?' No There’s Plenty Of God-damned Gas.' Where Are We Going?' I’m Going To Get Some God-damed Oranges!

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

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

What Were You Going To Do Tonight?" "i Was Going To Listen To The Songs Of Rachmaninoff." "who's That?" "a Dead Russian.

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.

I'm Going To Open Another Vottle. Not A Vottle, But A Bottle. You Open It And I'll Drink It. And You Try To Write As Much As I Did Without Falling Off Of Your Chair.

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

When I Get Down To My Last Dime I'll Just Walk Over To Skid Row." "there Are Some Real Weirdos Down There." "they're Everywhere.

That's What Friendship Means: Sharing The Prejudice Of Experience.

That Your Power Of Command With Simple Language Was One Of The Magnificent Things Of Our Century. (from The Poem: Result)

I Guess For Me Hemingway Is A Lot Like It Is For Others: He Goes Down Well When We Are Young.

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

She’s Mad, But She’s Magic.

I Pretend To Understand Because I Don't Want Anybody To Be Hurt

I Lapsed Into My Pathetic Cut-off Period. Often With Humans, Both Good And Bad, My Senses Simply Shut Off, They Get Tired, I Give Up. I Am Polite. I Nod. I Pretend To Understand Because I Don’t Want Anybody To Be Hurt. That Is The One Weakness That Has Lead Me Into The Most Trouble. Trying To Be Kind To Others I Often Get My Soul Shredded Into A Kind Of Spiritual Pasta. No Matter. My Brain Shuts Off. I Listen. I Respond. And They Are Too Dumb To Know That I Am Not There.

If You Can't Write The Next Line, Well, You're Dead. The Past Doesn't Matter.

Love Be Damned Now As Love Was Damned When It First Arrived.

The Tigers Have Found Me And I Do Not Care.

My Heart Is A Thousand Years Old. I Am Not Like Other People.

If You Let Them Kill You, They Will

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

Where Some God Pissed A Rain Of Reason To Make Things Grow Only To Die.

Hell, I'd Even Failed With Women. Three Wives. Nothing Really Wrong Each Time. It All Got Destroyed By Petty Bickering. Railing About Nothing. Getting Pissed-off Over Anything And Everything. Day By Day, Year By Year, Grinding. Instead Of Helping Each Other You Just Sliced Away, Picked At This Or That. Goading. Endless Goading. It Became A Cheap Contest. And Once You Got Into It, It Became Habitual. You Couldn't Seem To Get Out. You Almost Didn't Want To Get Out. And Then You Did Get Out. All The Way.

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?

The Problem Was You Had To Keep Choosing Between One Evil Or Another, And No Matter What You Chose, They Sliced A Little Bit More Off You, Until There Was Nothing Left.

The Trouble With A Mask Is It Never Changes

Genius Might Be The Ability To Say A Profound Thing In A Simple Way.

People Do Too Much. They Say Too Much.

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

Great Art Is Horseshit, Buy Tacos.

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

It Is Good To Be Sitting Some Place In Public At 2:30 In The Afternoon Without Getting The Flesh Ripped From Your Bones.

A Yet Women -good Women- Frightened Me Because They Eventually Wanted Your Soul, And What Was Left Of Mine, I Wanted To Keep. Basically I Craved Prostitutes, Base Women, Because They Were Deadly And Hard And Made No Personal Demands. Nothing Was Lost When They Left. Yet At The Same Time I Yearned For A Gentle, Good Woman, Despite The Overwhelming Price.

I Wanted The Whole World Or Nothing.

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

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.

The Last Cigarettes Are Smoked, The Loaves Are Sliced, And Lest This Be Taken For Wry Sorrow, Drown The Spider In Wine. You Are Much More Than Simply Dead: I Am A Dish For Your Ashes, I Am A Fist For Your Vanished Air. The Most Terrible Thing About Life Is Finding It Gone.

The Public Takes From A Writer, Or A Writing, What It Needs And Lets The Remainder Go. But What They Take Is Usually What They Need Least And What They Let Go Is What They Need Most.

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.

I Can Never Drive My Car Over A Bridge Without Thinking Of Suicide. I Can Never Look At A Lake Or An Ocean Without Thinking Of Suicide.

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.

It Began As A Mistake.

I Needed A Vacation. I Needed 5 Women. I Needed To Get The Wax Out Of My Ears. My Car Needed An Oil Change. I'd Failed To File My Damned Income Tax. One Of The Stems Had Broken Off Of My Reading Glasses. There Were Ants In My Apartment. I Needed To Get My Teeth Cleaned. My Shoes Were Run Down At The Heels. I Had Insomnia. My Auto Insurance Had Expired. I Cut Myself Every Time I Shaved. I Hadn't Laughed In 6 Years. I Tended To Worry When There Was Nothing To Worry About. And When There Was Something To Worry About, I Got Drunk.

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

When A Writer Is Swayed With His Fame And His Fortune, You Can Float Him Down The River With The Turds.

They Swallow God Without Thinking, They Swallow Country Without Thinking. Soon They Forget How To Think, They Let Others Think For Them.

There Are No Good Wars Or Bad Wars. The Only Thing Bad About A War Is To Lose It. All Wars Have Been Fought For A So-called Good Cause On Both Sides. But Only The Victor's Cause Becomes History's Noble Cause. It's Not A Matter Of Who Is Right Or Who Is Wrong, It's A Matter Of Who Has The Best Generals And The Better Army!

Oh, I Don’t Mean You’re Handsome, Not The Way People Think Of Handsome. Your Face Seems Kind. But Your Eyes - They’re Beautiful. They’re Wild, Crazy, Like Some Animal Peering Out Of A Forest On Fire.

… And We Are In Bed Together Laughing And We Don’t Care About Anything.

Writing Is Something That You Don't Know How To Do. You Sit Down And It's Something That Happens, Or It May Not Happen. So, How Can You Teach Anybody How To Write? It's Beyond Me, Because You Yourself Don't Even Know If You're Going To Be Able To. I'm Always Worried, Well, You Know, Every Time I Go Upstairs With My Wine Bottle. Sometimes I'll Sit At That Typewriter For Fifteen Minutes, You Know. I Don't Go Up There To Write. The Typewriter's Up There. If It Doesn't Start Moving, I Say, Well This Could Be The Night That I Hit The Dust.

You Are On The Freeway Threading Through Traffic Now, Moving Both Towards Something And Towards Nothing At All As You Punch The Radio On And Get Mozart, Which Is Something, And You Will Somehow Get Through The Slow Days And The Busy Days And The Dull Days And The Hateful Days And The Rare Days, All Both So Delightful And So Disappointing Because We Are All So Alike And So Different.

They Laughed. Things Were Funny. They Weren't Afraid To Care. There Was No Sense To Life, To The Structure Of Things.

And Yet Women-good Women--frightened Me Because They Eventually Wanted Your Soul, And What Was Left Of Mine, I Wanted To Keep.

I Didn't Like Anybody In That School. I Think They Knew That. I Think That's Why They Disliked Me. I Didn't Like The Way They Walked Or Looked Or Talked, But I Didn't Like My Mother Or Father Either. I Still Had The Feeling Of Being Surrounded By White Empty Space. There Was Always A Slight Nausea In My Stomach.

There Are Only Two Things Wrong With Money: Too Much Or Too Little.

And Love Was Lightning And Remembrance

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

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.

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

I Read My Books At Night, Like That, Under The Quilt With The Overheated Reading Lamp. Reading All Those Good Lines While Suffocating. It Was Magic.

When You Play The Field Selfishly Everything Works Against You: One Can’t Insist On Love Or Demand Affection. You’re Finally Left With Whatever You Have Been Willing To Give Which Often Is: Nothing.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

The World Had Somehow Gone Too Far, And Spontaneous Kindness Could Never Be So Easy.

I Don't Carry Notebooks And I Don't Consciously Store Ideas. I Try Not To Think That I Am A Writer And I Am Pretty Good At Doing That. I Don't Like Writers, But Then I Don't Like Insurance Salesmen Either.

I Used To Lay Drunk In Alleys And I Probably Will Again.bukowski, Who Is He? I Read About Bukowski And It Doesn't Seem Like Anything To Do With Me.

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.

I Am Going To Start Selling Air In Dark Orange Bags Marked: Moon-blooms

There's A Small Balcony Here, The Door Is Open And I Can See The Lights Of The Cars On The Harbor Freeway South, They Never Stop, That Roll Of Lights, On And On. All Those People. What Are They Doing? What Are They Thinking? We're All Going To Die, All Of Us, What A Circus! That Alone Should Make Us Love Each Other But It Doesn't.

I Guess The Only Time Most People Think About Injustice Is When It Happens To Them.

Your Writing", She Said To Me, "it's So Raw. It's Like A Sledgehammer, And Yet It Has Humor And Tenderness. . . .

The Whole World Is Caught In Her Glance And At Last The Universe Is Magnificent.

There Is A Loneliness In This World So Great That You Can See It In The Slow Movement Of The Hands Of A Clock

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.

The Free Soul Is Rare, But You Know It When You See It

I Held Her Wrists And Then I Got It Through The Eyes: Hatred, Centuries Deep And True. I Was Wrong And Graceless And Sick. All The Things I Had Learned Had Been Wasted. There Was No Creature Living As Foul As I And All My Poems Were False.

Death Meant Little To Me. It Was The Last Joke In A Series Of Bad Jokes.

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

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

I Was A Bore And Didn't Know When To Smile Or Fake It. Or Rather Worse, I Did But Didn't.

Things Will Be Far Worse Than They Are Now. And Far Better. I Wait.

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