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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.

-Charles Bukowski

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There Is Only One

Charles Bukowski

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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.

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She Knew What She Wanted And It Wasn't / Me. / I Know More Women Like That Than Any / Other Kind.

I Write As A Function. Without It I Would Fall Ill And Die. It's As Much A Part Of One As The Liver Or Intestine, And Just About As Glamorous.

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.

The Worst Thing For A Writer Is To Know Another Writer, And Worse Than That, To Know A Number Of Other Writers. Like Flies On The Same Turd.

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

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.

Lawyers, Doctors, Plumbers, They All Made The Money. Writers? Writers Starved. Writers Suicided. Writers Went Mad.

Censorship Is The Tool Of Those Who Have The Need To Hide Actualities From Themselves And From Others.

I Have No Time For Things That Have No Soul.

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

I Drive Around The Streets An Inch Away From Weeping, Ashamed Of My Sentimentality And Possible Love.

There's No Defense Except All The Errors Made

There's No Chance At All: We Are All Trapped By A Singular Fate.

Knowledge Without Follow-through Is Worse Than No Knowledge.

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

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.

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.

I Only Want Sweet Peace And Kindliness When I Awaken -- But There's Always Some Finger Pointing, Telling Me Some Terrible Deed I Committed During The Night. It Seems I Make A Lot Of Mistakes And It Seems That I Am Not Allowed Any.

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!

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.

"baby," I Said. "i'm A Genius But Nobody Knows It But Me."

The Worst Men Have The Best Jobs The Best Men Have The Worst Jobs Or Are Unemployed Or Locked In Madhouses.

This Incompleteness Is All We Have.

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

That Was The Trouble With Being A Writer, That Was The Main Trouble—leisure Time, Excessive Leisure Time. You Had To Wait Around For The Buildup Until You Could Write And While You Were Waiting You Went Crazy, And While You Were Going Crazy You Drank And The More You Drank The Crazier You Got.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

It Didn't Pay To Trust Another Human Being. Humans Didn't Have It, Whatever It Took.

People Are Not Good To Each Other. Perhaps If They Were Our Deaths Would Not Be So Sad.

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.

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.

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.

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

Keep Your Money In Your Pocket. Or Bet It On A Good Horse.

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

You Don't Go On "probably" When Love And Guns Are In Hand.

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

Basically, That's Why I Wrote: To Save My Ass, To Save My Ass From The Madhouse, From The Streets, From Myself.

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.

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

The Dog Approached Again, Cautiously. I Found The Bologna Sandwich, Ripped Off A Chunk, Wiped The Cheap Watery Mustard Off, Then Placed It On The Sidewalk. The Dog Walked Up To The Bit Of Sandwich, Put His Nose To It, Sniffed, Then Turned And Walked Off. This Time He Didn't Look Back. He Accelerated Down The Street. No Wonder I Had Been Depressed All My Life. I Wasn't Getting Proper Nourishment.

But Right Now It's Bob Dylan Bob Dylan Bob Dylan All The Way.

We Are Here To Laugh At The Odds.

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

Never Get Out Of Bed Before Noon.

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.

Getting Drunk Was Good. I Decided That I Would Always Like Getting Drunk. It Took Away The Obvious And Maybe If You Could Get Away From The Obvious Often Enough, You Wouldn't Become So Obvious Yourself.

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 Just Want A Hot Cup Of Coffee,black,and I Don’t Want To Hear About Your Troubles.

For Those Who Believe In God, Most Of The Big Questions Are Answered. But For Those Of Us Who Can't Readily Accept The God Formula, The Big Answers Don't Remain Stonewritten. We Adjust To New Conditions And Discoveries. We Are Pliable. Love Need Not Be A Command Nor Faith A Dictum. I Am My Own God. We Are Here To Unlearn The Teachings Of The Church, State And Our Educational System. We Are Here To Drink Beer. We Are Here To Kill War. We Are Here To Laugh At The Odds And Live Our Lives So Well That Death Will Tremble To Take Us.

And Getting Dressed We Talk About What Else There Might Be To Do, But Being Together Solves Most Of It, In Fact, Solves All Of It

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

Your Letters Got Sadder. Your Lovers Betrayed You. Kid, I Wrote Back, All Lovers Betray. It Didn't Help. You Said You Had A Crying Bench And It Was By A Bridge And The Bridge Was Over The River And You Sat On The Crying Bench Every Night And Wept For The Lovers Who Had Hurt And Forgotten You.

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.

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

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.

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

Bad Poetry Is Caused By People Who Sit Down And Think, Now I Am Going To Write A Poem.

What A Weary Time Those Years Were -- To Have The Desire And The Need To Live But Not The Ability.

Many A Good Man Has Been Put Under The Bridge By A Woman.

And Now Sometimes I'm Interviewed, They Want To Hear About Life And Literature And I Get Drunk And Hold Up My Cross-eyed, Shot, Runover De-tailed Cat And I Say,"look, Look At This!" But They Don't Understand, They Say Something Like,"you Say You've Been Influenced By Celine?" No," I Hold The Cat Up,"by What Happens, By Things Like This, By This, By This!

Our Bones Like Stems Into The Sky Will Forever Cry Victory

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.

Homosexuals Are Delicate And Bad Poetry Is Delicate And [allen] Ginsberg Turned The Tables By Making Homosexual Poetry Strong Poetry, Almost Manly Poetry; But In The Long Run, The Homo Will Remain The Homo And Not The Poet.

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

There Are So Many Days When Living Stops And Pulls Up And Sits And Waits Like A Train On The Rails.

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

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.

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.

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

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

It Began As A Mistake.

That The Young Rich Smell The Stink Of The Poor And Learn To Find It A Bit Amusing. They Had To Laugh, Otherwise It Would Be Too Terrifying.

Poetry Is What Happens When Nothing Else Can.

Well, The Rain Had Stopped But The Pain Was Still There.

It Was A Joy! Words Weren't Dull, Words Were Things That Could Make Your Mind Hum. If You Read Them And Let Yourself Feel The Magic, You Could Live Without Pain, With Hope, No Matter What Happened To You.

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

I Think A Man Can Keep On Drinking For Centuries, He'll Never Die; Especially Wine Or Beer...i Like Drunkards, Man, Because Drunkards, They Come Out Of It, And They're Sick And They Spring Back, They Spring Back And Forth...if I Hadn't Been A Drunkard, I Probably Would Have Committed Suicide Long Ago.

One Can Never Be Sure Whether It's Good Poetry Or Bad Acid

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.

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 .

When I Was A Boy I Used To Dream Of Becoming The Village Idiot. I Used To Lie In Bed And Imagine Myself The Happy Idiot Able To Get Food Easily ...and Easy Sympathy, A Planned Confusion Of Not Too Much Love Or Effort. Some Would Claim That I Have Succeeded.

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.

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.

Parties Sickened Me. I Hated The Game-playing, The Dirty Play, The Flirting, The Amateurs Drunks, The Bores.

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.

There Is Enough Treachery, Hatred Violence Absurdity In The Average Human Being To Supply Any Given Army On Any Given Day And The Best At Murder Are Those Who Preach Against It And The Best At Hate Are Those Who Preach Love And The Best At War Finally Are Those Who Preach Peace

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.

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

Wherever The Crowd Goes Run In The Other Direction. They're Always Wrong.

There's A Light Somewhere. It May Not Be Much Light But It Beats The Darkness.

And Then There Are Some Who Believe That Old Relationships Can Be Revived And Made New Again. But Please If You Feel That Way Don't Phone Don't Write Don't Arrive

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

News Travels Fast In Places Where Nothing Much Ever Happens.

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.

God Is A Lonely Place Without Steak.

I Often Stood In Front Of The Mirror Alone, Wondering How Ugly A Person Could Get.

The Shortest Distance Between Two Points Is Often Unbearable.

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

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

I Loved You Like A Man Loves A Woman He Never Touches, Only Writes To, Keeps Little Photographs Of.

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

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.

What's Wrong With Assholes, Baby?

The Wisdom To Quit Is All We Have Left.

I Knew It Would Be You

They Simply Never Understand, Do They, That Sometimes Solitude Is One Of The Most Beautiful Things On Earth?

I Had Decided Against Religion A Couple Of Years Back. If It Were True, It Made Fools Out Of People, Or It Drew Fools. And If It Weren't True, The Fools Were All The More Foolish. What I Need Is A Good Doctor, I Thought. You Either Lived Or Died.

People With No Morals Often Considered Themselves More Free, But Mostly They Lacked The Ability To Feel Or Love.

I Could Never Accept Life As It Was, I Could Never Gobble Down All Its Poisons Bu There Were Parts, Tenuous Magic Parts Open For The Asking.

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.

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

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.

Take A Writer Away From His Typewriter And All You Have Left Is The Sickness Which Started Him Typing In The Beginning

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.

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.

People Who Believe In Politics Are Like People Who Believe In God: They Are Sucking Wind Through Bent Straws.

People In Love Often Become Edgy, Dangerous. They Lose Their Sense Of Perspective.

My Greatest Problem Was Stamps, Envelopes, Paper And Wine, With The World On The Edge Of World War Ii.

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.

People Do Too Much. They Say Too Much.

If You're Going To Try, Go All The Way. Otherwise, Don't Even Start.

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.

Dogs And Angels Are Not Very Far Apart

They, All Of Them, Seemed To Put Literary Form In Front Of The Actuality And Living Of Life Itself.

Finally There Is Nothing Here For Death To Take Away.

You've Got To Rise From The Floor Alone Or Fall Back Alone.

The Role Of The Poet Is Almost Nothing...drearily Nothing. And When He Steps Outside Of His Boots And Tries To Get Tough As Our Dear Ezra [pound] Did, He Will Get His Pink Little Ass Slapped.

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.

You Are Yesterday's Bouquet So Sadly Raided

Sometimes You Just Have To Pee In The Sink.

Love Iz A Big Fat Turkey And Every Day Iz Thanksgiving

Of One Hundred Movies There's One That Is Fair, One That's Good And Ninety Eight That Are Very Bad. Most Movies Start Badly And Steadily Get Worse

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

As The Spirit Wanes The Form Appears

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

The Tired Sunsets And The Tired People - It Takes A Lifetime To Die And No Time At All.

In The Cupboard Sits My Bottle Like A Dwarf Waiting To Scratch Out My Prayers. I Drink And Cough Like Some Idiot At A Symphony, Sunlight And Maddened Birds Are Everywhere, The Phone Rings Gamboling Its Sound Against The Odds Of The Crooked Sea; I Drink Deeply And Evenly Now, I Drink To Paradise And Death And The Lie Of Love.

I Was In Love Again. I Was In Trouble

Those Faces You See Every Day On The Streets Were Not Created Entirely Without Hope: Be Kind To Them: Like You They Have Not Escaped.

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

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.

I Never Pump Up My Vulgarity. I Wait For It To Arrive In Its Own Terms.

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

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

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

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.

Was I The Only Person Who Was Distracted By This Future Without A Chance?

I Am A Series Of Small Victories And Large Defeats.

Small Victories

I Remembered My New Orleans Days, Living On Two Five-cent Candy Bars A Day For Weeks At A Time In Order To Have Leisure To Write. But Starvation, Unfortunately, Didn't Improve Art. It Only Hindered It. A Man's Soul Was Rooted In His Stomach. A Man Could Write Much Better After Eating A Porterhouse Steak And Drinking A Pint Of Whiskey Than He Could Ever Write After Eating A Nickel Candy Bar. The Myth Of The Starving Artist Was A Hoax.

There Is Nothing That Teaches You More Than Regrouping After Failure And Moving On.

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

There Are Worse Things Than Being Alone But It Often Takes Decades To Realize This And Most Often When You Do It's Too Late And There's Nothing Worse Than Too Late

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

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.

Life's As Kind As You Let It Be.

That’s When I First Learned That It Wasn’t Enough To Just Do Your Job, You Had To Have An Interest In It, Even A Passion For It.

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

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.

I Can Almost Understand Why People Leap From Bridges.

I Would Be Married, But I'd Have No Wife, I Would Be Married To A Single Life.

Sometimes I Hate You," She Said.

I Have Loved You Woman As Surely As I Have Named You Rust And Sand And Nylon.

As We Go On With Our Lives We Tend To Forget That The Jails And The Hospitals And The Madhouses And The Graveyards Are Packed.

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

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

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.

I Could Scream Down 90 Mountains To Less Than Dust If Only One Living Human Had Eyes In The Head And Heart In The Body, But There Is No Chance, My God, No Chance. Rat With Rat Dog With Dog Hog With Hog, Play The Piano Drunk Listen To The Drunk Piano, Realize The Myth Of Mercy Stand Still As Even A Child's Voice Snarls And We Have Not Been Fooled, It Was Only That We Wanted To Believe.

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

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.

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.

Unless It Comes Out Of Your Soul Like A Rocket, Unless Being Still Would Drive You To Madness Or Suicide Or Murder, Don't Do It. Unless The Sun Inside You Is Burning Your Gut, Don't Do It. When It Is Truly Time, And If You Have Been Chosen, It Will Do It By Itself And It Will Keep On Doing It Until You Die Or It Dies In You. There Is No Other Way. And There Never Was.

Capitalism Has Survived Communism. Now, It Eats Away At Itself.

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

Writing Is Like Going To Bed With A Beautiful Woman And Afterwards She Gets Up, Goes To Her Purse And Gives Me A Handful Of Money.

We’ve Died So Many Times Now That We Can Only Wonder Why We Still Care.

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

Agony Sometimes Changes Form But It Never Ceases For Anybody.

Hate Contains Truth. Beauty Is A Facade.

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)

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.

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.

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.

What? You’d Dare Drink Right After Getting Out Of Jail For Intoxication?” That’s When You Need A Drink The Most.

Why Don't We Go Back Out There And Tell Them What Happened? Because Nothing Happened Except That Everybody Has Been Driven Insane And Stupid By Life. In This Society There Are Only Two Things That Count: Don't Be Caught Without Money And Don't Get Caught High On Any Kind Of High. (night Streets Of Madness)

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.

Knowledge Is Knowing As Little As Possible.

Knowing Who You Are

The Courage It Took To Get Out Of Bed Each Morning To Face The Same Things Over And Over Was Enormous.

I Went To The Worst Of Bars Hoping To Get Killed But All I Could Do Was To Get Drunk Again.

It’s Hard To Drink When You Dance. And It’s Hard To Dance When You Drink.

Her Eyes Always Had A Frantic, Lost Look. He Could Never Cure Her Eyes Of That.

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 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.

It’s The Order Of Things: Each One Gets A Taste Of Honey Then The Knife.

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.

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