Background Image

...

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.

-Charles Bukowski

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

There's Nothing To Stop

Charles Bukowski

...

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.

Views: 13297

Topic

More From Charles Bukowski

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

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.

Thanksgiving. It Proved You Had Survived Another Year With Its Wars, Inflation, Unemployment, Smog, Presidents. It Was A Grand Neurotic Gathering Of Clans: Loud Drunks, Grandmothers, Sisters, Aunts, Screaming Children, Would-be Suicides. And Don't Forget Indigestion. I Wasn't Different From Anyone Else: There Sat The 18-pound Bird On My Sink, Dead, Plucked, Totally Disemboweled. Iris Would Roast It For Me.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Almost Everybody Is Born A Genius And Buried An Idiot.

Thought Provoking

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

Most Of The World Was Mad. And The Part That Wasn't Mad Was Angry. And The Part That Wasn't Mad Or Angry Was Just Stupid. I Had No Chance. I Had No Choice. Just Hang On And Wait For The End. It Was Hard Work. It Was The Hardest Work Imaginable.

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

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

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

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

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

There's A Bluebird In My Heart That Wants To Get Out But I Pour Whiskey On Him And Inhale Cigarette Smoke And The Whores And The Bartenders And The Grocery Clerks Never Know That He's In There.

Cigarette Smoke

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

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.

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.

The Tigers Have Found Me And I Do Not Care.

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.

It Seems I Make A Lot Of Mistakes And It Seems That I Am Not Allowed Any.

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

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.

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

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

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

So, That’s What They Wanted: Lies. Beautiful Lies. That’s What They Needed. People Were Fools. It Was Going To Be Easy For Me.

Four Days Alone With Nothing. Emerge Empowered. The First Human Face You See Will Knock You Back 50%.

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.

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.

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

I Had Noticed That Both In The Very Poor And Very Rich Extremes Of Society The Mad Were Often Allowed To Mingle Freely.

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

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.

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

I Couldn't Get Myself To Read The Want Ads. The Thought Of Sitting In Front Of A Man Behind A Desk And Telling Him That I Wanted A Job, That I Was Qualified For A Job, Was Too Much For Me. Frankly, I Was Horrified By Life, At What A Man Had To Do Simply In Order To Eat, Sleep, And Keep Himself Clothed. So I Stayed In Bed And Drank. When You Drank The World Was Still Out There, But For The Moment It Didn't Have You By The Throat.

Don't Fight Your Demons. Your Demons Are Here To Teach You Lessons. Sit Down With Your Demons And Have A Drink And A Chat And Learn Their Names And Talk About The Burns On Their Fingers And Scratches On Their Ankles. Some Of Them Are Very Nice.

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 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.

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

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.

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?

Some People Like What You Do, Some People Hate What You Do, But Most People Simply Don't Give A Damn.

When Ginsburg Is At The Top Of His Game You Might As Well Put Down Your Toys And Listen.

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.

...having Nothing To Struggle Against They Have Nothing To Struggle For.

Not Everybody Thought They Could Be A Dentist Or An Automobile Mechanic But Everybody Knew They Could Be A Writer.

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.

It Began As A Mistake.

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

Sundays Kill More People Than Bombs.

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.

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.

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

Love Is Kind Of Like When You See A Fog In The Morning, When You Wake Up Before The Sun Comes Out. It's Just A Little While, And Then It Burns Away... Love Is A Fog That Burns With The First Daylight Of Reality.

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

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.

Knowledge Without Follow-through Is Worse Than No Knowledge.

To Not To Have Entirely Wasted One’s Life Seems To Be A Worthy Accomplishment, If Only For Myself.

What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through The Fire

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

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.

I Went Home Each Night Dizzy And Sick. He Was Murdering Me With The Sound Of His Voice.

Some Men Never Die And Some Men Never Live But We're All Alive Tonight.

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.

Sometimes I Get Too Exhausted To Even Feel Bad

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

Look, Let Me Put It This Way: With Me, You’re Number One And There Isn’t Even A Number Two.

Love Is A Dog From Hell.

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

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

All That I Know Is That I Believe In The Sound Of Music And The Running Of A Horse. All Else Is Squabble.

Figuring The Average Poet Starts At 16, I Am 23.

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 Went To The Bathroom And Threw Some Water On My Face, Combed My Hair. If I Could Only Comb That Face, I Thought, But I Can't.

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

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.

Like The Fox I Run With The Hunted And If I’m Not The Happiest Man On Earth I’m Surely The Luckiest Man Alive.

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.

The Hangover Was Brutal But He Didn't Mind. It Told Him He Had Been Somewhere Else, Someplace Good.

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.

There Was Nothing Glorious About The Life Of A Drinker Or The Life Of A Writer.

It's Just That The Grape Has Me Down.

Life's As Kind As You Let It Be.

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 Male, For All His Bravado And Exploration, Is The Loyal One, The One Who Generally Feels Love. The Female Is Skilled At Betrayal And Torture And Damnation.

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.

Well, Death Says, As He Walks By, I'm Going To Get You Anyhow No Matter What You've Been: Writer, Cab-driver, Pimp, Butcher, Sky-diver, I'm Going To Get You

If I Stop Writing I Am Dead. And That's The Only Way I'll Stop: Dead.

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.

You Were Destroyed By What You Befriended.

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

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

That Moment - To This ... May Be Years In The Way They Measure, But It's Only One Sentence Back In My Mind - There Are So Many Days When Living Stops And Pulls Up And Sits And Waits Like A Train On The Rails. I Pass The Hotel At 8 And At 5; There Are Cats In The Alleys And Bottles And Bums, And I Look Up At The Window And Think, I No Longer Know Where You Are, And I Walk On And Wonder Where The Living Goes When It Stops.

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

I Have Two Rules. One Is, Never Trust A Man Who Smokes A Pipe. The Other Is, Never Trust A Man With Shiny Shoes.

I Write Right Off The Typer. I Call It My "machinegun." I Hit It Hard, Usually Late At Night While Drinking Wine And Listening To Classical Music On The Radio And Smoking Mangalore Ganesh Beedies.

I Am A Poem. There Is No Way Out.

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

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

Now Something So Sad Has Hold Of Us That The Breath Leaves And We Can't Even Cry.

In New York You've Got To Have All The Luck.

A Day Of Minor Profit Or Prophet Led To A Night Of Drunkenness.

In This Room The Hours Of Love Still Make Shadows.

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

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.

Yes?’ He Asked, Looking At Me Over The Sheet. ‘i’m A Writer Temporarily Down On My Inspirations.’ ‘oh, A Writer, Eh?’ ‘yes.’ ‘are You Sure?’ ‘no, I’m Not.’ ‘what Do You Write?’ ‘short Stories Mostly. And I’m Halfway Through A Novel.’ ‘a Novel, Eh?’ ‘yes.’ ‘what’s The Name Of It?’ ‘”the Leaky Faucet Of My Doom.”‘ ‘oh, I Like That. What’s It About?’ ‘everything.’ ‘everything? You Mean, For Instance, It’s About Cancer?’ ‘yes.’ ‘how About My Wife?’ ‘she’s In There Too.

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

Dont Undress My Love You Might Find A Mannequin Dont Undress The Mannequin You Might Find Love. Shes Long Ago Forgotten Me. Hes Trying On A New Hat And Looks More The Coquette Then Ever. She Is A Child And A Mannequin And Death. I Can't Hate That. She Didnt Do Anything Unusual. I Only Wanted Her To.

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.

Something That Never Happens Anywhere At Any Time.

Maybe When I Get In The Grave, Things Will Be Beautiful.

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.

I Mean, Say That You Figure That Everything Is Senseless, Then It Can't Be Quite Senseless Because You Are Aware That It's Senseless And Your Awareness Of Senselessness Almost Gives It Sense. You Know What I Mean?

I Could Read The Great Books But The Great Books Don't Interest Me.

If You Think They Didn't Go Crazy In Tiny Rooms Just Like You're Doing Now Without Women Without Food Without Hope Then You're Not Ready.

I Had No Interests. I Had No Interest In Anything. I Had No Idea How I Was Going To Escape. At Least The Others Had Some Taste For Life. They Seemed To Understand Something That I Didn’t Understand. Maybe I Was Lacking. It Was Possible. I Often Felt Inferior. I Just Wanted To Get Away From Them. But There Was No Place To Go. Suicide? Jesus Christ, Just More Work. I Felt Like Sleeping For Five Years But They Wouldn’t Let Me.

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

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

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.

Style Is The Answer To Everything. A Fresh Way To Approach A Dull Or Dangerous Thing. To Do A Dull Thing With Style Is Preferable To Doing A Dangerous Thing Without It. To Do A Dangerous Thing With Style Is What I Call Art.

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

Being Alone Never Felt Right. Sometimes It Felt Good, But It Never Felt Right.

Loneliness And Solitude

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

I Have A Face Like A Washrag. I Sing Love Songs And Carry Steel. I Would Rather Die Than Cry. I Can't Stand Hounds Can't Live Without Them. I Hang My Head Against The White Refrigerator And Want To Scream Like The Last Weeping Of Life Forever But I Am Bigger Than The Mountains.

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.

Sometimes A Man Doesn’t Know What To Do About Things And Sometimes It’s Best To Lie Very Still And Try Not To Think At All About Anything.

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.

Pain Is Absurd Because It Exists, Nothing More.

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

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

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

If You Want To Know Who Your Friends Are, Get Yourself A Jail Sentence.

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.

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

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.

If You're Going To Try, Go All The Way. This Could Mean Losing Girlfriends, Wives, Relatives, Jobs And Maybe Your Mind.

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.

Mercy, I Think, Doesn't The Human Race Know Anything About Mercy?

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.

Goodness Can Be Found Sometimes In The Middle Of Hell.

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.

Joan Of Arc Had Style. Jesus Had Style.

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!

The Writer Has No Responsibility Other Than To Jack Off In Bed Alone And Write A Good Page.

Most People Are Not Ready For Death, Theirs Or Anybody Elses.

And The Color In My Eyes Has Gone Back Into The Sea.

I Sit On The Couch Watching Her Arrange Her Long Red Hair Before My Bedroom Mirror. She Pulls Her Hair Up And Piles It On Top Of Her Head- She Lets Her Eyes Look At My Eyes- Then She Drops Her Hair And Lets It Fall Down In Front Of Her Face. We Go To Bed And I Hold Her Speechlessly From The Back My Arm Around Her Neck I Touch Her Wrists And Hands Feel Up To Her Elbows No Further.

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.

Some Of My Poems Indicate That I Am Writing While Living Alone After A Split With A Woman, And I've Had Many Splits With Women. I Need Solitude More Often When I'm Not Writing Than When I Am.

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.

She Is No Longer The Beautiful Woman She Was. She Sends Photos Of Herself Sitting Upon A Rock By The Ocean Alone And Damned. I Could Have Had Her Once. I Wonder If She Thinks I Could Have Saved Her?

I Never Write In The Daytime. It's Like Running Through The Shopping Mall With Your Clothes Off. Everybody Can See You. At Night ... That's When You Pull The Tricks ... Magic.

Let' Em Learn Or Let' Em Die

There's Music In Everything, Even Defeat

Only The Boring Get Bored

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

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 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.

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

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

From The Beginning, Through The Middle Years And Up To The End: Too Bad, Too Bad, Too Bad.

If You Have The Ability To Love, Love Yourself First.

Ability To Love

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

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.

When You Leave Your Typewriter You Leave Your Machine Gun And The Rats Come Pouring Through.

Hemingway And Saroyan Had The Line, The Magic Of It. The Problem Was That Hemingway Didn't Know How To Laugh And Saroyan Was Filled With Sugar.

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

Purple Does Something Strange To Me

It Was Hard For Me To Believe. When Recess Was Over I Sat In Class And Thought About It. My Mother Had A Hole And My Father Had A Dong That Shot Juice. How Could They Have Things Like That And Walk Around As If Everything Was Normal, And Talk About Things, And Then Do It And Not Tell Anybody?

Erections, Ejaculations,exhibitions And General Tales Of Ordinary Madness.

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

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

Our Disappointment Sits Between Us.

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

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

It’s When You Hide Things That You Choke On Them.

I Don't Remember Going To Bed, But In The Morning, There I Was.

Gradually I Came To Realize That My Understanding Of Women Goes Only As Far As The Pleasure Is Concerned.

When A Hot Woman Meets A Hermit One Of Them Is Going To Change.

You Are Yesterday's Bouquet So Sadly Raided

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

The Years Have Gone By Quickly. Death Sits In The Seat Next To Me. We Make A Lovely Couple.

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.

I Kept Telling Myself That All The Women In The World Weren´t Whores, Just Mine.

Most People's Deaths Are A Sham. There's Nothing Left To Die.

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

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

My Flesh Looked Like It Wasn't Trying. It Looked Like It Hated Being Part Of Me.

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

I Do Not Like To Work And Have No Trade But I Do Like To Eat, So This Is Basic, The Basic Training Of Slaves To Fear.

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)

Trending Author

Category