Top quotes by Charles Bukowski

The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don't have to waste your time voting. Votes: 23

The free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it - basically because you feel good, very good, when you are near or with them. Votes: 23

We have wasted History like a bunch of drunks shooting dice back in the men's crapper of the local bar. Votes: 20

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. Votes: 17

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. Votes: 15

Never get out of bed before noon. Votes: 11

darkness falls upon Humanityand faces become terriblethingsthat wanted more than therewas.all our days are marked withunexpectedaffronts - somedisastrous, othersless sobut the process iswearing andcontinuous.attrition rules.most givewayleavingempty spaceswhere people shouldbe.and nowas we ready to self-destructthere is very little left tokillwhich makes the tragedyless and moremuch muchmore. Votes: 11

My mother, poor fish,wanting to be happy, beaten two or three times aweek, telling me to be happy: "Henry, smile!why don't you ever smile?"and then she would smile, to show me how, and it was thesaddest smile I ever saw" Votes: 10

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. Of course, I expect this, but the knife still cuts. Votes: 7

when I drive the freeways I see the soul of humanity ofmy city and it's ugly, ugly, ugly: the living have choked theheartaway. Votes: 6

The female loves to play man against man. And if she is in a position to do it, there is not one who will resist. Votes: 5

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. Votes: 4

The Artist, an ancient sage had once said, is always sitting on the doorsteps of the rich. Votes: 4

When I drive the freeways I see the soul of humanity ofmy city and it's ugly, ugly, ugly: the living have choked theheartaway." Votes: 4

I am a series of small victories and large defeats." Votes: 4

Our progenitors, our educational systems, the land, the media, the way have deluded and misled the masses: they have been defeated by the aridity of the actual dream. they were unaware that achievement or victory or luck or whatever the hell you want to call it must have its defeats." Votes: 4

I sit heredrunk now.I am a series ofsmall victoriesand large defeatsand I am asamazedas any otherthatI have gottenfrom there toherewithout committing murderor beingmurdered;withouthaving ended up in themadhouse.as I drink aloneagain tonightmy soul despite all the pastagonythanks all the godswho were nottherefor methen." Votes: 4

sometimes it's hard to knowwhat todo. Votes: 3

Zircoff," I said, "put the tomatoes away." "Piss," he said, "I wish they were hand grenades. Votes: 3

I had noticed that both in the very poor and very rich extremes of society the mad were often allowed to mingle freely. Votes: 2

Never bring a lot of money to where a poor man lives. He can only lose what little he has. On the other hand it is mathematically possible that he might win whatever you bring with you. What you must do, with money and the poor, is never let them get too close to one another. Votes: 2

I was so thin I could slice bread with my shoulderblades, only I seldom had bread Votes: 1

Of course, there would always be arguments. That is the nature of Woman. They like the mutual exchange of dirty laundry, a bit of screaming, a bit of dramatics. Then an exchange of vows. Votes: 1

It never happenedbut it seemed likethere were times when rotstoppedwaited like a streetcarat a signal. Votes: 1

Morning night and noonthe traffic moves throughand the murder and treacheryof friends and loversand all the peoplemove through you.pain is the joy of knowingthe unkindest truththat arrives without warning.life is being alonedeath is being alone.even the fools weepmorning night and noon. Votes: 1

We went up the Harbor freeway north and then we cut onto the San Diego freeway north. I hated the San Diego freeway. It always jammed. Then I noticed a slight rain beginning to fall."That's it," I said, "it's beginning to rain." All the cars were going to stop. California drivers didn't know how to drive in the rain." Votes: 1

There's a small balcony here, the door is open and I can see the lights ofthe 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 allgoing to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't." Votes: 1

Everything was eternally dreary, dismal, damned. Even the weather was insolent and bitchy." Votes: 1

The park grass looked greener, the park benches looked better and the flowers were trying harder." Votes: 1

I will remember your small room, the feel of you, the light in the window, your records, your books, our morning coffee, our noons, our nights, our bodies spilled together, sleeping, the tiny flowing currents, immediate and forever. Your leg, my leg, your arm, my arm, your smile and the warmth of you who made me laugh again." Votes: 1

Miracle I have just listened to this symphony which Mozart dashed off in one day and it had enough wild and crazy joy to last forever, whatever forever is Mozart came as close as possible to that." Votes: 0

If you have the ability to love, love yourself first. Votes: 0

people see so many movies that when they finally see one not so bad as the others, they think it's great. an Academy Award means that you don't stink quite as much as your cousin. Votes: 0

my hands dead my heart dead silence adagio of rocks the world ablaze that's the best for me. Votes: 0

That's the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

I was beaten down long ago in some alley in another world. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Joan of Arc had style. Jesus had style. Votes: 0

The Difference Between Art and Life is that Art is More Bearable Votes: 0

An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way. Votes: 0

Everything was a trap: women, drugs, whiskey, wine, scotch, beer - even beer - cigars, and cigarettes. Traps: Work or no work. Traps: Artistry or no artistry; everything sucked you into some spiderweb. I disdained the use of the needle for the same reason that I disdained some so-called beautiful women - the price was far beyond the measure of the worth. I didn't want to hustle that hard. Votes: 0

All our days are marked with/ unexpected/ affronts--some/ disastrous, others/ less so/ but the process is/ wearing and/ continuous./ Attrition rules./ Most give/ way/ leaving/ empty spaces/ where people should/ be. Votes: 0

They never pay the slaves enough so they can get free, just enough so they can stay alive and come back to work. Votes: 0

I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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... Votes: 0

Drink from the well of yourself and begin again. Votes: 0

It was like the beginning of life and laughter. It was the real meaning of the sun Votes: 0

A woman must be nursed into subsistence by love, where a man can become stronger by being hated." - from 'Cows in Art Class Votes: 0

I would be married, but I'd have no wife, I would be married to a single life. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

There's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out. Votes: 0

There's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I'm too tough for him, I say, stay in there, I'm not going to let anybody see you. Votes: 0

Sex is interesting, but it's not totally important. I mean it's not even as important (physically) as excretion. A man can go seventy years without a piece of ass, but he can die in a week without a bowel movement. Votes: 0

Love is a horse with a broken leg trying to stand while 45,000 people watch. Votes: 0

Bullfighting can be an art Boxing can be an art Loving can be an art Opening a can of sardines can be an art Votes: 0

The ladies usually go for the biggest damn fool they can find; that is why the human race stands where it does today: we have bred the clever and lasting Casanovas, all hollow inside, like the chocolate Easter bunnies we foster upon our poor children. Votes: 0

I am not like other people. I am burning in hell. The hell of myself. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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 Votes: 0

places to hunt places to hide are getting harder to find, and pet canaries and goldfish too, did you notice that? Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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! Votes: 0

I was fighting a small fight of my own which wasn't leading anywhere-but like a man with a bent spoon trying to dig through a cement wall I knew that a small fight was better than quitting: it kept the heart alive. Votes: 0

and I laugh, I can still laugh, who can't laugh when the whole thing is so ridiculous that only the insane, the clowns, the half-wits, the cheaters, the whores, the horseplayers, the bankrobbers, the poets ... are interesting? Votes: 0

my beerdrunk soul is sadder than all the dead christmas trees of the world. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Don't ever write a novel unless it hurts like a hot turd coming out. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

We waste days like mad blackbirds and pray for alcoholic nightsour silk-sick human smiles wrap around us like somebody else's confetti Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

I hated you when it would have taken less courage to love. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Some people never go crazy, What truly horrible lives they must live. Votes: 0

great writers are indecent people they live unfairly saving the best part for paper. good human beings save the world so that bastards like me can keep creating art, become immortal. if you read this after I am dead it means I made it. Votes: 0

There would never be a way for me to live comfortably with people. Maybe I'd become a monk. I'd pretend to believe in God and live in a cubicle, play an organ and stay drunk on wine. Votes: 0

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 tied to get away from me but it was difficult: Cupid, in his strange way, was really there. Votes: 0

Love is a fog that burns with the first daylight of reality. Votes: 0

I see men assassinated around me every day. I walk through rooms of the dead, streets of the dead, cities of the dead; men without eyes, men without voices; men with manufactured feelings and standard reactions; men with newspaper brains, television souls and high school ideas. Votes: 0

You can forgive a fool because he only runs in one direction and doesn't deceive anybody. It's the deceivers who make you feel bad. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

writers are desperate people and when they stop being desperate they stop being writers. Votes: 0

...maybe a damned good night's sleep will bring me back to a gentle sanity. But at the moment, I look about this room and, like myself, it's all in disarray: things fallen out of place, cluttered, jumbled, lost, knocked over and I can't put it straight, don't want to. Perhaps living through these petty days will get us ready for the dangerous ones. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

The shortest distance between two points is often unbearable. Votes: 0

one more creature dizzy with love Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Some people like what you do, some people hate what you do, but most people simply don't give a damn. Votes: 0

Do you hate people? I don't hate them...I just feel better when they're not around. Votes: 0

I stopped looking for a Dream Girl, I just wanted one that wasn't a nightmare. Votes: 0

Cautiously, I allowed myself to feel good at times. I found moments of peace in cheap rooms just staring at the knobs of some dresser or listening to the rain in the dark. The less I needed the better I felt. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Long before I became 'rich and famous' I just sat round drinking wine and staring at the walls. Votes: 0

it is all ash and dry leaves and grief gone like an ocean liner. Votes: 0

The apartment was built at the edge of a high cliff so that when you looked out the back window it seemed as if you were twelve floors up instead of four. It was very much like living on the edge of the world - a last resting place before the final big drop. Votes: 0

Erections, Ejaculations,Exhibitions and General Tales of Ordinary Madness. Votes: 0

I was laying in bed one night and I thought 'I'll just quit - to hell with it.' And another little voice inside me said 'Don't quit - save that tiny little ember of spark.' And never give them that spark because as long as you have that spark, you can start the greatest fire again. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us. Votes: 0

when I am feeling low all i have to do is watch my cats and my courage returns Votes: 0

If I never see you again I will always carry you inside outside on my fingertips and at brain edges and in centers centers of what I am of what remains. Votes: 0

Knowledge without follow-through is worse than no knowledge. Votes: 0

Once a woman turns against you, forget it. They can love you, then something turns in them. They can watch you dying in a gutter, run over by a car, and they'll spit on you. Votes: 0

I went to the worst of bars hoping to get killed but all I could do was to get drunk again. Votes: 0

The crowd is the gathering place of the weakest; true creation is a solitary act. Votes: 0

People empty me. I have to get away to refill. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is. Votes: 0

If you are going to try, go all the way or don't even start. If you follow it you will be alive with the gods. It is the only good fight there is. Votes: 0

one can never be sure whether it's good poetry or bad acid Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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! Votes: 0

Don't wait for the good woman. She doesn't exist. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics. Votes: 0

Great art is horseshit, buy tacos. Votes: 0

great books are the ones we need Votes: 0

The hangover was brutal but he didn't mind. It told him he had been somewhere else, someplace good. Votes: 0

Well, people got attatched. Once you cut the umbilical cord they attatched to the other things. Sight, sound, sex, money, mirages, mothers, masturbation, murder, and Monday morning hangovers. Votes: 0

The streets were full of insane & dull people. Most of them lived in nice houses and didn't seem to work, and you wondered how they did it. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

When a hot woman meets a hermit one of them is going to change. Votes: 0

Boring damned people. All over the earth. Propagating more boring damned people. What a horror show. The earth swarmed with them. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

I loved you like a man loves a woman he never touches, only writes to, keeps little photographs of. Votes: 0

Genius might be the ability to say a profound thing in a simple way. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

If you want to know who your friends are, get yourself a jail sentence. Votes: 0

Never trust a man in a jumpsuit Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

You've got to know when to let a woman go if you want to keep her,and if you don't want to keep her you let her go anyhow so it's always a process of letting go, one way or the other. Votes: 0

In my next life I want to be a cat. To sleep 20 hours a day and wait to be fed. To sit around licking my ass. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Hey, Hank, I notice all the women around your place lately ... good looking stuff; you're doing all right." "Sam," I say, "that's not true; I am one of God's most lonely men. Votes: 0

If you're losing your soul and you know it, then you've still got a soul left to lose. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

I like the way Mahler wandered about in his music and still retained his passion. He must have looked like an earthquake walking down the street. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Bad taste creates many more millionaires than good taste. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

My ambition is handicapped by laziness Votes: 0

The trouble with a mask is it never changes Votes: 0

I have two rules. One is, never trust a man who smokes a pipe. The other is, never trust a man with shiny shoes. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

New Year's Eve always terrifies me. Votes: 0

what matters most is how well you walk through the fire Votes: 0

Baby," I said, "I'm a genius but nobody knows it but me. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

I have loved you woman as surely as I have named you rust and sand and nylon. Votes: 0

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 Votes: 0

you boys can keep your virgins give me hot old women in high heels with asses that forgot to get old. Votes: 0

I heard an airplane passing overhead. I wished I was on it. Votes: 0

Some men hope for revolution but when you revolt and set up your new government you find your new government is still the same old Papa, he has only put on a cardboard mask. Votes: 0

The park grass looked greener, the park benches looked better and the flowers were trying harder. Votes: 0

Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

I drive around the streets an inch away from weeping, ashamed of my sentimentality and possible love. Votes: 0

Lighting new cigarettes, pouring more drinks. It has been a beautiful fight. Still is. Votes: 0

Simplicity is always the secret, to a profound truth, to doing things, to writing, to painting. Life is profound in its simplicity Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

What were you going to do tonight?" "I was going to listen to the songs of Rachmaninoff." "Who's that?" "A dead Russian. Votes: 0

That's how it is with books, isn't it: They're not in a hurry. They'll wait for you till you're ready. People empty me. I have to go away to refill. Votes: 0

Invent yourself and then reinvent yourself. Votes: 0

The masses are always wrong...Wisdom is doing everything the crowd does not do. All you do is reverse the totality of their learning and you have the heaven they're looking for. Votes: 0

Well, people got attatched. Once you cut the umbilical cord they attatched to the other things. Sight, sound, sex, money, mirages, mothers, masturbation, murder, and Monday morning hangovers Votes: 0

There is moss on the wallsand the stain of thought and failure andwaiting Votes: 0

Love is alright 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!! Votes: 0

A pro does as well as he can within whathe has set out to doand a madmandoes exceptionally well at whathe can't helpdoing. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

regret is mostly caused by not havingdone anything. Votes: 0

I didn't know who tobelievebutone thing I doknow: when a man islivingmany claim relationshipsthat are hardlysoand after he dies, well,then it's everybody'sparty. Votes: 0

I like to prowl ordinary places.I feel sorry for us all or glad for us allcaught alive togetherand awkward in that way.there's nothing better than the jokeof usthe seriousness of usthe dullness of us Votes: 0

the courage it took to get out of bed eachmorningto face the same thingsover and overwasenormous. Votes: 0

Courage comes from the belly - all else is desperation. Votes: 0

I could never acceptlife as it was,I could never gobbledown all itspoisonsbu there were parts,tenuous magic partsopen for theasking. Votes: 0

we must bringour own lightto thedarkness. Votes: 0

it is so dark now with the sadness ofpeoplethey were tricked, they were taught to expect theultimate when nothing ispromisednow young girls weep alone in small roomsold men angrily swing their canes atvisions asladies comb their hair asants search for survivalhistory surrounds usand our livesslink awayinshame. Votes: 0

I see a brightportionunder the overhead lightthat shades intodarknessand then into darkerdarknessand I can't see beyond that. Votes: 0

Life wore a man out, wore a man thin.Tomorrow would be a better day. Votes: 0

be it peace or happinesslet it enfold you Votes: 0

when we were kidslaying around the lawnon ourbellieswe often talkedabouthowwe'd like todieandwe allagreed on thesamething;we'd alllike to diefucking(althoughnone of ushaddone anyfucking)and nowthatwe are hardlykidsany longerwe think moreabouthownot todieandalthoughwe'rereadymost ofuswouldprefer todo italoneunder thesheetsnowthatmost ofushave fuckedour livesaway. Votes: 0

having nothing to struggleagainstthey have nothing to strugglefor. Votes: 0

the worst thing," he told me,"is bitterness, people end up sobitter. Votes: 0

girlsplease give yourbodies and yourlivestothe young menwhodeserve thembesidesthere isno wayI would welcometheintolerabledullsenseless hellyou would bringmeandI wish youluckin bedandoutbut notinminethankyou. Votes: 0

the gods play nofavorites. Votes: 0

I paid, got up, walkedto the door, openedit.I heard the mansay, "that guy'snuts."out on the street Iwalked northfeelingcuriouslyhonored. Votes: 0

she slammed the door andwas gone.I looked at the closed doorand at the doorknoband strangelyI didn't feelalone. Votes: 0

the gods seldomgivebut so quicklytake. Votes: 0

Can you remember who you were, before the world told you who you should be? Votes: 0

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 Votes: 0

and love is a word usedtoo much andmuchtoo soon. Votes: 0

there's no clarity.there was never meant to be clarity. Votes: 0

I often stood in front of the mirror alone, wondering how ugly a person could get. Votes: 0

it does seemthe more we drinkthe better the wordsgo. Votes: 0

I feel no grief for being called somethingwhichI am not;in fact, it's enthralling, somehow, like a goodback rub Votes: 0

one doesn't even think ofthe liverand if the liverdoesn't think ofus, that'sfine. Votes: 0

she wasn't veryinterestingbut few peopleare. Votes: 0

the price of creationis nevertoo high.the price of livingwith other peoplealwaysis. Votes: 0

when you're younga pair offemalehigh-heeled shoesjust sittingalonein the closetcan fire yourbones;when you're oldit's justa pair of shoeswithoutanybodyin themandjust aswell. Votes: 0

I found the best thingI could dowas just to type awayat my own workand let the dyingdieas they always have. Votes: 0

the world is better withoutthem.only the plants and the animals aretrue comrades.I drink to them and withthem. Votes: 0

as long as there arehuman beings aboutthere is never going to beany peacefor any individualupon this earth (oranywhere elsethey mightescape to).all you can dois maybe grabten lucky minuteshereor maybe an hourthere.somethingis working toward youright now, andI mean youand nobody butyou. Votes: 0

sometimes all we need to be able to continue aloneare the deadrattling the wallsthat close us in. Votes: 0

wesat theresmokingcigarettesat5in the morning. Votes: 0

all theorieslike clichesshot to hell,all these small faceslooking upbeautiful and believing;I wish to weepbut sorrow isstupid.I wish to believe but believe is agraveyard. we have narrowed it down tothe butcherknife and themockingbird wish usluck. Votes: 0

There is a blue bird in my heart that wants to get out. Votes: 0

Potential," I said, "doesn't mean a thing. You've got to do it. Almost every baby in a crib has more potential than I have. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

the lies of centuries, the lies of love,the lies of Socrates and Blake and Christwill be your bedmates and tombstonesin a death that will never end. Votes: 0

I decided to stay in bed until noon. Maybe by then half the world would be dead and it would only be half as hard to take. Votes: 0

Anything, anything to stop drowning in this dull, trivial and cowardly existence. Votes: 0

Existence was not only absurd, it was plain hard work Votes: 0

She was perfect, pure maddening sex, and she knew it, and she played on it, dripped it, and allowed you to suffer for it. Votes: 0

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 Votes: 0

I never met another man I'd rather be. And even if that's a delusion, it's a lucky one. Votes: 0

some moments are nice, some arenicer, some are even worthwritingabout. Votes: 0

I didn't have any friends at school, didn't want any. I felt better being alone. I sat on a bench and watched the others play and they looked foolish to me. Votes: 0

The area dividing the brain and the soul Is affected in many ways by experience --Some lose all mind and become soul:insane.Some lose all soul and become mind:intellectual.Some lose both and become:accepted. Votes: 0

Her one drink had Cecelia giggling and talking and she was explaining that animals had souls too. Nobody challenged her opinion. It was possible, we knew. What we weren't sure of was if we had any. Votes: 0

Basically, that's why I wrote: to save my ass, to save my ass from the madhouse, from the streets, from myself. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Why do we embroider everything we saywith special emphasis when all we really need to dois simply say whatneeds to he said?Of coursethe fact isthat there is very little that needsto be said. Votes: 0

where some god pissed a rain of reason to make things grow only to die, Votes: 0

He fell off the table like a crab looking for the sea. Votes: 0

I don't know. It's been terribly hard for me. How do I know you won't do it again?''Nobody is ever quite sure of what they will do. You aren't sure what you might do. Votes: 0

that your power of commandwith simple language wasone of the magnificent things ofour century.(from the poem: result) Votes: 0

Are you anti-black?I'm anti-everything. Votes: 0

Tell him to seek the stars and he will kill himself with climbing. Votes: 0

Everything you own must be able to fit inside one suitcase; then your mind might be free. Votes: 0

My cock was hard, but my spirit wasn't in it. Votes: 0

Are there good governments and bad governments? No, there are only bad governments and worse governments. Votes: 0

They took all the joy out of fucking by talking about it all the time. I liked to fuck too, but it wasn't my religion. Votes: 0

You're the most unknown famous man I ever met. Votes: 0

Love is not a candle burning down. Life is. And love and life are not the same or else Love, having choice, nobody would ever die. Votes: 0

crawled like a blind slug into the web Votes: 0

You're the most unknown famous man I ever met Votes: 0

Medju nama nije bilo nikakve veze, osim sto smo pili i vodili ljubav. Votes: 0

All we do is sleep, and eat and lay around and make love. We're like slugs. Slug-love, I call it. Votes: 0

I run with the hunted. Votes: 0

the best part waspulling down theshadesstuffing the doorbellwith ragsputting the phonein therefrigeratorand going to bedfor 3 or 4days. and the next bestpartwasnobody evermissedme. Votes: 0

Genius could be the ability to say a profound thing in a simple way, or even to say a simple thing in a simpler way. Votes: 0

Style means no shield at all.Style means no front at all.Style means ultimate naturalness.Style means one man alone with billions of men about. Votes: 0

To create art means to be crazy aloneforever. Votes: 0

My heart is a thousand years old. I am not like other people. Votes: 0

as the shadows assumeshapesI fight the slowretreatnowmy once-promisedwindlingdwindlingnowlighting new cigarettespouring moredrinksit has been a beautifulfightstillis. Votes: 0

How are his poems?""He's not as good as he thinks he is, but then most of us feel that way. Votes: 0

The centuries are sprinkled with rare magicwith divine creatureswho help us get past the common and extraordinary ills that beset us Votes: 0

I wish to weepbut sorrow isstupid.I wish to believebut belief is agraveyard. Votes: 0

my mother, poor fish,wanting to be happy, beaten two or three times aweek, telling me to be happy: "Henry, smile!why don't you ever smile?"and then she would smile, to show me how, and it was thesaddest smile I ever saw Votes: 0

love needs too much help, he said.hate takes care of itself. Votes: 0

hate contains truth. beauty is a facade. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

it doesn't matter if Prince Charles falls off his horseor that the hummingbird is so seldomseenor that we are too senseless to goinsane.coffee. give us more of that NOTHINGcoffee. Votes: 0

I am sick with caring. Votes: 0

The Artist," an ancient sage had once said, "is always sitting on the doorsteps of the rich. Votes: 0

I like to prowl ordinary placesand taste the people-from a distance. Votes: 0

She's mad, but she's magic. There's no lie in her fire. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Yeah? Well, if there's anything worse than a whore it's a bore. Votes: 0

for meobedience to another is the decayof self Votes: 0

I have, he went on, betrayed myself withbelief, deluded myself with lovetricked myself with sex.the bottle is damned faithful, he said,the bottle will not lie Votes: 0

Find what you love and let it kill you. Votes: 0

Life's as kind as you let it be. Votes: 0

I wait on my fix:I am a poetry junkie. Votes: 0

animals never worry about Heaven or Hell. neither do I. maybe that's why we get along Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

and our few good times will be rare because we have the critical senseand are not easy to fool with laughter Votes: 0

Music is much like fucking, but some composers can't climax and others climax too often, leaving themselves and the listener jaded and spent. Votes: 0

I tell you such fine music waits in the shadows of hell. Votes: 0

I canalmost understandwhypeopleleapfrombridges. Votes: 0

it's good to have things done withwhen they don't workit's also good not to hateor even forgetthe person you've failed with. Votes: 0

It's not the large things that send a man to the madhouse... no, it's the continuing series of small tragedies... not the death of his love but the shoelace that snaps with no time left. Votes: 0

I made practice runs down to skid row to get ready for my future. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Any asshole can chase a skirt, art takes discipline. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

I am a series of small victories and large defeats. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

It was sad, it was sad, it was sad. When Betty came back we didn't sing or laugh, or even argue. We sat drinking in the dark, smoking cigarettes, and when we went to sleep, I didn't put my feet on her body or she on mine like we used to. We slept without touching. We had both been robbed. Votes: 0

Now something so sad has hold of us that the breath leaves and we can't even cry. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

And yet women-good women--frightened me because they eventually wanted your soul, and what was left of mine, I wanted to keep. Votes: 0

nobody can save you but yourself. you will be put again and again into nearly impossible situations. they will attempt again and again through subterfuge, guise and force to make you submit, quit and/or die quietly inside. nobody can save you but yourself Votes: 0

Sundays kill more people than bombs. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

People are strange: They are constantly angered by trivial things, but on a major matter like totally wasting their lives, they hardly seem to notice. Votes: 0

We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing. Votes: 0

It was like a church in there as only the truly lost sit in bars on Tuesday mornings at 8:00 a.m. Votes: 0

love iz a big fat turkey and every day iz thanksgiving Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

What a woman wants is a reaction. What a man wants is a woman. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

writing about a writer's block is better than not writing at all Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

But then if you lied to a man about his talent just because he was sitting across from you, that was the most unforgivable lie of them all, because that was telling him to go on, to continue which was the worst way for a man without real talent to waste his life, finally. But many people did just that, friends and relatives mostly. Votes: 0

If you can only remain pure in your stupidity, someday you may get a phone call from hell. Votes: 0

Never envy a man his lady. Behind it all lays a living hell. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

To do a dull thing with style-now that's what I call art. Votes: 0

It's possible to love a human being if you don't know them too well. Votes: 0

Understand me. I’m not like an ordinary world. I have my madness, I live in another dimension and I do not have time for things that have no soul. Votes: 0

The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence. Votes: 0

I wasn’t lonely. I experienced no self-pity. I was just caught up in a life in which I could find no meaning. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose, they sliced a little more off you, until there was nothing left. At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole goddamned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidate who reminded them most of themselves. Votes: 0

For each Joan of Arc there is a Hitler perched at the other end of the teeter-totter. Votes: 0

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, and I will remember your small room the feel of you the light in the window your records your books our morning coffee our noons our nights our bodies spilled together sleeping the tiny flowing currents immediate and forever your leg my leg your arm my arm your smile and the warmth of you who made me laugh again. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

The world is full of boring, identical and mindless people. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Wherever the crowd goes run in the other direction. They're always wrong. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Censorship is the tool of those who have the need to hide actualities from themselves and from others. Their fear is only their inability to face what is real, and I can't vent any anger against them. I only feel this appalling sadness. Somewhere, in their upbringing, they were shielded against the total facts of our existence. They were only taught to look one way when many ways exist. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Sometimes you just have to pee in the sink. Votes: 0

Slavery was never abolished, it was only extended to include all the colors. Votes: 0

I guess the only time most people think about injustice is when it happens to them. Votes: 0

You have to die a few times before you can really live. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Success is always dangerous. It can make an asshole out of anybody. Votes: 0

Drinking is an emotional thing. It joggles you out of the standardism of everyday life, out of everything being the same. It yanks you out of your body and your mind and throws you against the wall. I have the feeling that drinking is a form of suicide where you're allowed to return to life and begin all over the next day. It's like killing yourself, and then you're reborn. I guess I've lived about ten or fifteen thousand lives now. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Insanity is relative. Who sets the norm? Votes: 0

An artist is a man who says a difficult thing in a simple way Votes: 0

Beware of those who seek constant crowds; they are nothing alone. Votes: 0

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 stone-written. 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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

I no longer want it all, just some comfort and some sex and some minor love. Votes: 0

nobody can save you but yourself and you’re worth saving. it’s a war not easily won but if anything is worth winning then this is it. Votes: 0

Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I'm not going to make it, but you laugh inside — remembering all the times you've felt that way. Votes: 0

There may not be a hell, but those who judge may create one. I think people are over-taught. They are over-taught everything. You have to find out by what happens to you, how you will react. I'll have to use a strange term here... "good." I don't know where it comes from, but I feel that there's an ultimate strain of goodness born in each of us. I don't believe in God, but I believe in this "goodness" like a tube running through our bodies. It can be nurtured. It's always magic, when on a freeway packed with traffic, a stranger makes room for you to change lanes... it gives you hope. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

You know the typical crowd, Wow, it’s Friday night, what are you going to do? Just sit there? Well, yeah. Because there’s nothing out there. It’s stupidity. Stupid people mingling with stupid people. Let them stupidify themselves. I’ve never been bothered with the need to rush out into the night. That’s all. Sorry for all the millions, but I’ve never been lonely. I like myself. I’m the best form of entertainment I have. Votes: 0

If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. Votes: 0

people run from rain but sit in bathtubs full of water. Votes: 0

Let it die. Let there be a new beginning. It’s awful. Goodnight. Votes: 0

He asked, "What makes a man a writer?" "Well," I said, "it's simple. You either get it down on paper, or jump off a bridge. Votes: 0

as the spirit wanes the form appears Votes: 0

True revolution comes from true revulsion; when things get bad enough the kitten will kill the lion. Votes: 0

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? Votes: 0

People with no morals often considered themselves more free, but mostly they lacked the ability to feel or love. Votes: 0

Drinking is another way of thinking, another way of living. It gives you two lives instead of one. Votes: 0

It’s so easy to be easy—if you let it. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Almost everyone is born a genius and buried an idiot. Votes: 0

And don't forget: time is meant to be wasted, love fails and death is useless. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

There are only two things wrong with money: too much or too little. Votes: 0

The less I needed, the better I felt. Votes: 0

I want so much that is not here and do not know where to go. Votes: 0

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? Votes: 0

It seems I make a lot of mistakes and it seems that I am not allowed any. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Sexual intercourse is kicking death in the ass while singing. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

I have gotten so used to melancholia that I greet it like an old friend. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Bad poetry is caused by people who sit down and think, Now I am going to write a Poem. Votes: 0

the tigers have found me and I do not care. Votes: 0

Intellectuals say simple things in difficult ways. Artists say difficult things in simple ways. Votes: 0

I don’t understand people, never will. It looks like I got to travel pretty much alone. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

our bones like stems into the sky will forever cry victory Votes: 0

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... Votes: 0

..few writers like other writers' works. The only time they like them is when they are dead or if they have been for a long time. Writers only like to sniff their own turds. I am one of those. I don't even like to talk to writers, look at them or worse, listen to them. And the worst is to drink with them, they slobber all over themselves, really look piteous, look like they are searching for the wing of the mother. I'd rather think about death than about other writers. Far more pleasant. Votes: 0

Our disappointment sits between us. Votes: 0

Before my death I hope to obtain my life. Votes: 0

My body gnaws at me from one side and my spirit gnaws at me from the other. Votes: 0

The crazy ones only laugh when there is no reason to laugh. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Are you becoming what you've always hated? Votes: 0

not writing is not good but trying to write when you can't is worse. Votes: 0

I remember awakening one morning and finding everything smeared with the color of forgotten love. Votes: 0

I've never met another man I'd rather be. Votes: 0

To experience real agony is something hard to write about, impossible to understand while it grips you; you're frightened out of your wits, can’t sit still, move, or even go decently insane. Votes: 0

That's the way it ends. The thin edge of the wedge. Votes: 0

What good are you? What can you do? It has cost me a thousands of dollars to raise you, feed you, clothe you! Suppose I left you here on the street? Then what would you do?" "Catch butterflies Votes: 0

There is nothing that teaches you more than regrouping after failure and moving on. Yet most people are stricken with fear. They fear failure so much that they fail. They are too conditioned, too used to being told what to do. It begins with the family, runs through school and goes into the business world. Votes: 0

Dying in a a war never stopped wars from happening. Votes: 0

I like women who haven’t lived with too many men. I don’t expect virginity but I simply prefer women who haven’t been rubbed raw by experience. There is a quality about women who choose men sparingly; it appears in their walk in their eyes in their laughter and in their gentle hearts. Women who have had too many men seem to choose the next one out of revenge rather than with feeling. 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. Votes: 0

There is something about writing poetry that brings a man close to the cliff's edge. Votes: 0

Look, let me put it this way: with me, you’re number one and there isn’t even a number two. Votes: 0

This is a world where everybody’s gotta do something. Ya know, somebody laid down this rule that everybody’s gotta do something, they gotta be something. You know, a dentist, a glider pilot, a narc, a janitor, a preacher, all that . . . Sometimes I just get tired of thinking of all the things that I don’t wanna do. All the things that I don’t wanna be. Places I don’t wanna go, like India, like getting my teeth cleaned. Save the whale, all that, I don’t understand that . . . Votes: 0

I grow tired of 18th century moralities in a 20th century space-atomic age Votes: 0

No matter how little a man has he will find that he will always settle for less. Votes: 0

People who believe in politics are like people who believe in God: they are sucking wind through bent straws. Votes: 0

The free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it Votes: 0

We don’t even ask happiness, just a little less pain. Votes: 0

If there are junk yards in hell, love is the dog that guards the gates. Votes: 0

There still might be a place for us somewhere. Votes: 0

With me, my main vision for life was to avoid as many people as possible. The less people I saw the better I felt. Votes: 0

Drinking is an emotional thing. It joggles you out of the standardism of everyday life, out of everything being the same. Votes: 0

Those who preach god, need god Those who preach peace do not have peace Those who preach love do not have love Votes: 0

mercy, I think, doesn't the human race know anything about mercy? Votes: 0

I felt I had to win. It seemed very important. I didn't know why it was important and I kept thinking, why do I think this is so important? And another part of me answered, just because it is. Votes: 0

Trouble and pain were what kept a man alive. Or trying to avoid trouble and pain. It was a full time job. Votes: 0

If I bet on humanity, I'd never cash a ticket. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

The night kept coming on in and there was nothing I could do. Votes: 0

I hope that death contains less than this. Votes: 0

too often, the only escape is sleep Votes: 0

I was in love again. I was in trouble Votes: 0

I just want a hot cup of coffee,black,and I don’t want to hear about your troubles. Votes: 0

dogs and angels are not very far apart Votes: 0

To be young is the only religion. Votes: 0

I have no time for things that have no soul. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Love came hard and very seldom. When it did it was usually for the wrong reasons. Votes: 0

Each person is only given so many evenings and each wasted evening is a gross violation against the natural course of your only life. Votes: 0

It's 4:30 in the morning, it's always 4:30 in the morning. Votes: 0

Sometimes I get too exhausted to even feel bad Votes: 0

I pretend to understand because I don't want anybody to be hurt Votes: 0

the tired sunsets and the tired people - it takes a lifetime to die and no time at all. Votes: 0

Death is nothing, brother, it's life that's hard Votes: 0

being alone never felt right. sometimes it felt good, but it never felt right. Votes: 0

It’s the order of things: each one gets a taste of honey then the knife. Votes: 0

if you get married they think you're finished and if you are without a woman they think you're incomplete. Votes: 0

People do too much. They say too much. Votes: 0

Poetry is what happens when nothing else can. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

If it doesn't come bursting out of you in spite of everything, don’t do it. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

they simply never understand, do they, that sometimes solitude is one of the most beautiful things on earth? Votes: 0

I’ve had so many knives stuck into me, when they hand me a flower I can’t quite make out what it is. It takes time. Votes: 0

The secret is writing down one simple line after another. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

A love like that was a serious illness, an illness from which you never entirely recover. Votes: 0

there is always one woman to save you from another and as that woman saves you she makes ready to destroy Votes: 0

My part of the game is that I must live the best I can. Votes: 0

Why do you insist upon destroying yourself? Votes: 0

we know God is dead, they've told us, but listening to you I wasn't sure. Votes: 0

all that I know is that I believe in the sound of music and the running of a horse. all else is squabble. Votes: 0

stay with the beer. beer is continuous blood. a continuous lover. Votes: 0

to fight for each minute is to fight for what is possible within yourself, so that your life and your death will not be like theirs. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

I don't remember going to bed, but in the morning, there I was. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Things get bad for all of us, almost continually, and what we do under the constant stress reveals who/what we are. Votes: 0

it's better to be happy...if you can..!! Votes: 0

she’s mad, but she’s magic. Votes: 0

And I said to myself that he was the first thing that I had ever missed in my life. Votes: 0

bad writing's like bad women: there's just not much you can do about it Votes: 0

Some nights I knew that if I slept I would die. Votes: 0

Only the boring get bored Votes: 0

There's no way I can stop writing, it's a form of insanity. Votes: 0

When you drank the world was still out there, but for the moment it didn’t have you by the throat. Votes: 0

God knows I am not too hippy. Perhaps because I am too much around the hip and I fear fads for, like anybody else, I like something that tends to last. Votes: 0

I was glad I wasn't in love, that I wasn't happy with the world. I like being at odds with everything. People in love often become edgy, dangerous. They lose their sense of perspective. They lose their sense of humor. They become nervous, psychotic bores. They even become killers. Votes: 0

News travels fast in places where nothing much ever happens. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Some lose all mind and become soul,insane. some lose all soul and become mind, intellectual. some lose both and become accepted Votes: 0

unless the sun inside you is burning your gut, don't do it Votes: 0

If I hadn't been a drunkard, I probably would have committed suicide long ago. Votes: 0

In the morning it was morning and I was still alive. Votes: 0

I got lost somehow, began staring up her legs. I was always a leg man. It was the first thing I saw when I was born. But then I was trying to get out. Ever since I have been working in the other direction and with pretty lousy luck. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

When you clean up a city, you destroy it. Votes: 0

sometimes I hate you," she said. Votes: 0

Food is good for the nerves and the spirit. Courage comes from the belly – all else is desperation. Votes: 0

Without literature, life is hell. Votes: 0

There are times when those eyes inside your brain stare back at you. Votes: 0

I have been treated better than I should have been---not by life in general nor by the machinery of things but by women. Votes: 0

I wanted the whole world or nothing. Votes: 0

Real loneliness is not necessarily limited to when you are alone. Votes: 0

What? You’d dare drink right after getting out of jail for intoxication?” That’s when you need a drink the most. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Goodness can be found sometimes in the middle of hell. Votes: 0

If you let them kill you, they will Votes: 0

I often carry things to read so that I will not have to look at the people. Votes: 0

Many a good man has been put under the bridge by a woman. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

I was naturally a loner, content just to live with a woman, eat with her, sleep with her, walk down the street with her. I didn't want conversation, or to go anywhere except the racetrack or the boxing matches. I didn't understand t.v. I felt foolish paying money to go into a movie theatre and sit with other people to share their emotions. Parties sickened me. I hated the game-playing, the dirty play, the flirting, the amateur drunks, the bores. Votes: 0

Things will be far worse than they are now. And far better. I wait. Votes: 0

Her eyes always had a frantic, lost look. He could never cure her eyes of that. Votes: 0

It's better to do a dull thing with style than a dangerous thing without it. Votes: 0

Animals never worry about Heaven or Hell. Neither do I. Maybe that's why we get along. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Capitalism has survived communism. Now, it eats away at itself. Votes: 0

We do not abandon ship. I say, as corny as it may sound, through the strength and spirit and fire and dare and gamble of a few men in a few ways we can save the carcass of humanity from drowning. No light goes out until it goes out. Let's fight as men, not rats. Period. No further addition. Votes: 0

That's your response to everything: drink?" "No, that's my response to nothing. Votes: 0

Those who escape hell however never talk about it and nothing much bothers them after that Votes: 0

If you want to create, you'll create... Votes: 0

I will put on my shoes and shirt and get out of here - it'll be better for all of us. Votes: 0

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 Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

I don't think I have written a poem when I was completely sober. But I have written a few good ones or a few bad ones under the hammer of a black hangover when I didn't know whether another drink or a blade would be the best thing. Votes: 0

A woman has to have something on or there's nothing to take off. Votes: 0

pain is absurd because it exists, nothing more. Votes: 0

I am a dolt of a man, easily made happy or even stupidly happy almost without cause and left alone I am mostly content. Votes: 0

A woman is a full time job. You have to choose your profession. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

love be damned now as love was damned when it first arrived. Votes: 0

pull a string, a puppet moves ... each man must realize that it can all disappear very quickly: the cat, the woman, the job, the front tire, the bed, the walls, the room; all our necessities including love, rest on foundations of sand -- and any given cause, no matter how unrelated: the death of a boy in Hong Kong or a blizzard in Omaha ... can serve as your undoing. all your chinaware crashing to the kitchen floor, your girl will enter and you'll be standing, drunk, in the center of it and she'll ask: my god, what's the matter? and you'll answer: I don't know, I don't know ... Votes: 0

I am a poem. There is no way out. Votes: 0

People need me. I fill them. If they can't see me for a while they get desperate, they get sick. But if I see them too often I get sick. It's hard to feed without getting fed. Votes: 0

It began as a mistake. Votes: 0

Well, we lost it, and that’s all there is to that. Votes: 0

Women: I liked the colors of their clothing; the way they walked; the cruelty in some faces; now and then the almost pure beauty in another face, totally and enchantingly female. They had it over us: they planned much better and were better organized. While men were watching professional football or drinking beer or bowling, they, the women, were thinking about us, concentrating, studying, deciding - whether to accept us, discard us, exchange us, kill us or whether simply to leave us. In the end it hardly mattered; no matter what they did, we ended up lonely and insane. Votes: 0

Most people's deaths are a sham. There's nothing left to die. Votes: 0

The wisest thing to do if you’re living in hell is to make yourself comfortable. Votes: 0

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 Votes: 0

Humanity, you never had it to begin with. Votes: 0

purple does something strange to me Votes: 0

It didn't pay to trust another human being. Humans didn't have it, whatever it took. Votes: 0

It’s when you hide things that you choke on them. Votes: 0

I walked around the block twice, passed 200 people and failed to see a human being. Votes: 0

Why did I come here? I thought. Why is it always only a matter of choosing between something bad and something worse? Votes: 0

There is light somewhere. Votes: 0

Careful poetry and careful people live only long enough to die safely. Votes: 0

I am not a snob; it is simply that I am not interested with what most people have to say, or what they want to do — mostly with my time. Votes: 0

All a guy needed was a chance. Somebody was alway controlling who got a chance and who didn't. Votes: 0

If you can hit a guy once, you can hit him twice. Votes: 0

Love breaks my bones and I laugh Votes: 0

I had no feeling for the things so many others needed. Votes: 0

Censorship is the tool of those who have the need to hide actualities from themselves and from others. Votes: 0

In New York you've got to have all the luck. Votes: 0

To not to have entirely wasted one’s life seems to be a worthy accomplishment, if only for myself. Votes: 0

We are hardly ever as strong as that which we create. Votes: 0

An early taste of death is not necessarily a bad thing. Votes: 0

Don’t do it. Don’t love me. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

That was all a man needed: hope. It was lack of hope that discouraged a man. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

I want to let her know though that all the nights sleeping beside her even the useless arguments were things ever splendid and the hard words I ever feared to say can now be said: I love you. Votes: 0

there is enough treachery , hatred violence absurdity in the average human being to supply any given army on any given day Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! Votes: 0

Parties sickened me. I hated the game-playing, the dirty play, the flirting, the amateurs drunks, the bores. Votes: 0

I don't think I'll travel anymore. Travel is nothing but an inconvenience. There is always enough trouble where you are. Votes: 0

I never pump up my vulgarity. I wait for it to arrive in its own terms. Votes: 0

I was an Agnostic. Agnostics didn't have much to argue about. Votes: 0

It’s nice enough to make a man weep, but I don’t weep, do you? Votes: 0

He had long nostril hairs, powerfully intimidating, like an unscheduled nightmare. Votes: 0

Sex can sometimes become the most horrible of tasks. Votes: 0

Gradually I came to realize that my understanding of women goes only as far as the pleasure is concerned. Votes: 0

I kept telling myself that all the women in the world weren´t whores, just mine. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

little sun little moon little dog and a little to eat and a little to love and a little to live for in a little room filled with little mice who gnaw and dance and run while I sleep waiting for a little death in the middle of a little morning in a little city in a little state my little mother dead my little father dead in a little cemetery somewhere. I have only a little time to tell you this: watch out for little death when he comes running but like all the billions of little deaths it will finally mean nothing and everything: all your little tears burning like the dove, wasted. Votes: 0

I knew I was strong, and maybe like they said, "crazy." But I had this feeling inside of me that something real was there. Votes: 0

some men never die and some men never live but we're all alive tonight. Votes: 0

If you can't write the next line, well, you're dead. The past doesn't matter. Votes: 0

They were beautiful nothings Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

People just don't know how to write down a simple easy line. It's difficult for them; it's like trying to keep a hard-on while drowning - not many can do it. Votes: 0

She was desperate and she was choosey at the same time and, in a way, beautiful, but she didn't have quite enough going for her to become what she imagined herself to be. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

nothing can save you except writing. it keeps the walls from failing. Votes: 0

I am too sick to lay down the sidewalks frighten me the whole damned city frightens me, what I will become what I have become frightens me. Votes: 0

There's nothing else as pleasant as being unpleasant when there's nothing else to do, and there's usually nothing else to do. Votes: 0

The worst men have the best jobs the best men have the worst jobs or are unemployed or locked in madhouses. Votes: 0

If you want to know where God is, ask a drunk. Votes: 0

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 Votes: 0

I feel strangely normal. Votes: 0

I'm not the cruel type, but they are, and that's the secret. Votes: 0

There's nothing to mourn about death any more than there is to mourn about the growing of a flower. What is terrible is not death but the lives people live or don't live up until their death. They don't honor their own lives ... their minds are full of cotton. They swallow God without thinking, they swallow country without thinking. Soon they forget how to think, they let others think for them.... Most people's deaths are a sham. There's nothing left to die. Votes: 0

I was young I was so young it hurt like a knife inside because there was no alternative except to hide as long as possible--- not in self-pity but with dismay at my limited chance: trying to connect. Votes: 0

It will rain all this night and we will sleep transfixed by the dark water as our blood runs through our fragile life. Votes: 0

I think that the world should be full of cats and full of rain, that's all, just cats and rain, rain and cats, very nice, good night. Votes: 0

The empty, the angry, the lonely, the tricked, we are all museums of fear. Votes: 0

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? Votes: 0

My dear, Find what you love and let it kill you. Let it drain you of your all. Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness. Let it kill you and let it devour your remains. For all things will kill you, both slowly and fastly, but it’s much better to be killed by a lover. ~ Falsely yours Votes: 0

We’ve died so many times now that we can only wonder why we still care. Votes: 0

Belane, are you nuts?" Who knows? Insanity is comparative. Who sets the norm? Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

I think I need a drink.' 'Almost everybody does only they don't know it. Votes: 0

Human relationships are strange. I mean, you are with one person a while, eating and sleeping and living with them, loving them, talking to them, going places together, and then it stops. Votes: 0

I've found out why men sign their names to their works- not that they created them but more than the others did not. Votes: 0

They swallow God without thinking, they swallow country without thinking. Soon they forget how to think, they let others think for them. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

The trouble with these people is that their cities have never been bombed and their mothers have never been told to shut up. Votes: 0

‎"she’ mad but she’ magic. there’ no lie in her fire. Votes: 0

God is a lonely place without steak. Votes: 0

It’s not so much that nothing means anything but more that it keeps meaning nothing. there’s no release, just gurus and self- appointed gods and hucksters. the more people say, the less there is to say. even the best books are dry sawdust. Votes: 0

they say that nothing is wasted: either that or it al is Votes: 0

Your writing", she said to me, "it's so raw. It's like a sledgehammer, and yet it has humor and tenderness. . . . Votes: 0

he asked, "what makes a man a writer?" "well," I said, "it's simple, it's either you get it down on paper or you jump off a bridge. writers are desperate people and when they stop being desperate they stop being writers." "are you desperate?" "I don't know... Votes: 0

The writer has no responsibility other than to jack off in bed alone and write a good page. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

I am aware that a computer can’t create a poem, but neither can a typewriter. Votes: 0

Bad luck for the young poet would be a rich father, an early marriage, an early success or the ability to do anything well. Votes: 0

If you're going to try, go all the way. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives, jobs and maybe your mind. Votes: 0

Keep your money in your pocket. Or bet it on a good horse. Votes: 0

there's no chance at all: we are all trapped by a singular fate. Votes: 0

Anybody can be a non-drunk. It takes a special talent to be a drunk. It takes endurance. Endurance is more important than truth. Votes: 0

i was born to hustle roses down the avenue of the dead. Votes: 0

my youth, one time, that time I knew even through the nothingness, it was a celebration of something not to do but only know. Votes: 0

People were usually much better in their letters than in reality. They were much like poets in this way. Votes: 0

Some people have written that my writing has helped them go on. It has helped me too. The writing, the roses, the 9 cats. Votes: 0

I would give anything for a female's hand on me tonight. they soften a man and then leave him listening to the rain. Votes: 0

I'll get back to the whores and the horses and the booze, while there's time. Votes: 0

lay down. lay down like an animal and wait. Votes: 0

I'm very clever at hiding poems perhaps more clever than I am at writing them. Votes: 0

I walk into the kitchen, look at the typer down there on the floor. It's a dirty floor. It's a dirty typer that types dirty stories Votes: 0

the masses are everywhere they know how to do things: they have sane and deadly angers for sane and deadly things. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

...having nothing to struggle against they have nothing to struggle for. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

the history of melancholia includes all of us. Votes: 0

this time has finished me. Votes: 0

eleven months. now she's gone gone as they go. Votes: 0

Too often the people complain that they have done nothing with their lives and then they wait for somebody to tell them that this isn't so. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

but right now it's Bob Dylan Bob Dylan Bob Dylan all the way. Votes: 0

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? Votes: 0

They have no idea that it can be done by a bus driver, a field hand, or a fry cook. They have no idea where it comes from. It comes from pain, damnation and impossibility. The blow to the soul of the gut. It comes from getting burned and seared and slugged. It comes from...new and awful places and the same old places. Votes: 0

I thought you were sane," I said, "but you're just as crazy as the rest of them. Votes: 0

The human heart, as of course we all know is essentially good Votes: 0

it is good to be sitting some place in public at 2:30 in the afternoon without getting the flesh ripped from your bones. Votes: 0

I'm going, she said. I love you but you're crazy, you're doomed. Votes: 0

I've never been lonely. I like myself. I'm the best form of entertainment I have. Let's drink more wine! Votes: 0

Something that never happens anywhere at any time. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

We are all museums of fear. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

...the human body is mostly blood and mystery and sadness... Votes: 0

Maybe when I get in the grave, things will be beautiful. Votes: 0

Find what you love and let it kill you. For all things will kill you, both slowly and fastly, but it’s much better to be killed by a lover. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

There's music in everything, even defeat Votes: 0

The writing's easy, it's the living that is sometimes difficult. Votes: 0

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 Votes: 0

A spark can set a whole forest on fire. Just a spark. Save it. Votes: 0

If I stop writing I am dead. And that's the only way I'll stop: dead. Votes: 0

Writers are nothing but beggars with a good line. Votes: 0

Morals were restrictive, but they were grounded on human experience. Votes: 0

There is nothing that teaches you more than regrouping after failure and moving on. Votes: 0

In a capitalistic society the losers slaved for the winners and you have to have more losers than winners. Votes: 0

…He was always high on drugs. I was not a drug man, but in case I wanted to hide from myself for a few days, I knew I could get anything I wanted from him. Votes: 0

Each man's hell is in a different place: mine is just up and behind my ruined face. Votes: 0

Four days alone with nothing. Emerge empowered. The first human face you see will knock you back 50%. Votes: 0

Complaint is often the result of an insufficient ability to live within the obvious restrictions of this god damned cage. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

You can steal my women but don't play with my whiskey. Votes: 0

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 Votes: 0

We must.. We must bring our own light to the darkness Votes: 0

We are here to laugh at the odds. Votes: 0

I have seen too many men wilt and go silly under a little light, and then they continue to write and get published, turning out pure crap under a name that has become a bad habit. The next poem is all that counts. You can't stand on past poems. Votes: 0

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 Votes: 0

Death is not the problem; waiting around for it is. Votes: 0

What a weary time those years were -- to have the desire and the need to live but not the ability. Votes: 0

Love is a Dog from Hell. Votes: 0

I would certainly end up forever crying the blues into a coffee cup in a park for old men playing chess or silly games of some sort. Votes: 0

she was consumed by 3 simple things: drink, despair, loneliness; and 2 more: youth and beauty Votes: 0

Not everybody thought they could be a dentist or an automobile mechanic but everybody knew they could be a writer. Votes: 0

we had such tremendous fun and much agony together for some years Votes: 0

life itself is not the miracle. that pain should be so constant, that's the miracle - Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

sometimes there's nothing to say about death. Votes: 0

we drove on and on, past little villages and both good things and bad things were happening to the people in those villages too, but I still was nothing but arms and ears and eyes and maybe there'd be either some good luck for me or more death tomorrow. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

don't be ashamed of anything; I guess God meant it all like locks on doors. Votes: 0

you've got to burn straight up and down and then maybe sidewise for a while and have your guts scrambled by a bully and the demonic ladies, you've got to run along the edge of madness teetering, you've got to starve like a winter alleycat, you've go to live with the imbecility of at least a dozen cities, then maybe maybe maybe you might know where you are for a tiny blinking moment. Votes: 0

Sometimes there's luck, When there is you stock up on it and wait for the other times Votes: 0

there are policemen in the street and angels in the clouds Votes: 0

To me, nudity is a joke. I don't think nude people are very attractive at all. I like my women fully clothed. I like to imagine what might be under there. It might not be the standard thing. Imagine, stripping a woman down, and she has a body like a little submarine. With periscope, propellers, torpedoes. That would be the one for me. I'd marry her right off and be faithful to the end. Votes: 0

WHEN YOU LEAVE YOUR TYPEWRITER YOU LEAVE YOUR MACHINE GUN AND THE RATS COME POURING THROUGH. Votes: 0

...in that drunken place you would like to hand your heart to her and say touch it but then give it back. Votes: 0

there is a loneliness in this world so great that you can see it in the slow movement of the hands of a clock Votes: 0

for a man of 55 who didn't get laid until he was 23 and not very often until he was 50 I think that I should stay listed via Pacific Telephone until I get as much as the average man has had Votes: 0

Modern women ... they don't sew your pockets ... forget that. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Dying should come easy: like a freight train you don't hear when your back is turned. Votes: 0

There is nothing as boring as the truth. Votes: 0

Courts are places where the ending is written first and all that precedes is simply vaudeville. Votes: 0

I once lay in a white hospital for the dying and the dying self, where some god pissed a rain of reason to make things grow only to die, where on my knees I prayed for LIGHT, I prayed for l*i*g*h*t, and praying crawled like a blind slug into the web where threads of wind stuck against my mind and I died of pity for Man, for myself, on a cross without nails, watching in fear as the pig belches in his sty, farts, blinks and eats. Votes: 0

we only asked for leopards to guard our thinning dreams. Votes: 0

the psyche has been burned and left us senseless, the world has been darker than lights-out in a closet full of hungry bats, and the whiskey and wine entered our veins when blood was too weak to carry on Votes: 0

Knowledge is knowing as little as possible. Votes: 0

Banion wondered which was worse - being sodomized by aliens, or having to sit through two hours of Charles Ives. Votes: 0

When a writer is swayed with his fame and his fortune, you can float him down the river with the turds. Votes: 0

so it's always a process of letting go, one way or another Votes: 0

my 6 foot goddess makes me laugh the laughter of the mutilated who still need love... she has saved me from everything that is not here Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

she knew what she wanted and it wasn't / me. / I know more women like that than any / other kind. Votes: 0

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) Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

and if I have any advice to give to anybody it’s this: take up watercolor painting. Votes: 0

Pretty words, as pretty women, wrinkle up and die. Votes: 0

And if there is anybody out there who is crazy enough to want to become a writer, I'd say go ahead, spit in the eye of the sun, hit those keys, it's the best madness going, the centuries need help, the species cry for light and gamble and laughter. Give it to them. There are enough words for all of us. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

alone with everybody the flesh covers the bone and they put a mind in there and sometimes a soul, and the women break vases against the walls and them men drink too much and nobody finds the one but they keep looking crawling in and out of beds. flesh covers the bone and the flesh searches for more than flesh. there's no chance at all: we are all trapped by a singular fate. nobody ever finds the one. the city dumps fill the junkyards fill the madhouses fill the hospitals fill the graveyards fill nothing else fills. Votes: 0

I broke that town in half like a wooden match. Votes: 0

One more drink and you're dead. This is no way to talk to a suicide head. Votes: 0

take a writer away from his typewriter and all you have left is the sickness which started him typing in the beginning Votes: 0

I'm too careless. I don't put out enough effort. I'm tired. Votes: 0

There was nothing glorious about the life of a drinker or the life of a writer. Votes: 0

There's a light somewhere. It may not be much light but it beats the darkness. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

I take much pleasure in being alone but there is also a strange warm grace in not being alone. Votes: 0

They laughed. Things were funny. They weren't afraid to care. There was no sense to life, to the structure of things. Votes: 0

But she projected vitality - you knew that she was there. Votes: 0

They, all of them, seemed to put literary form in front of the actuality and living of life itself. Votes: 0

Long ago, among other lies they were taught that silence was bravery. Votes: 0

and even the trees we walked under seemed less than trees and more like everything else. Votes: 0

i am going to start selling air in dark orange bags marked: moon-blooms Votes: 0

When Ginsburg is at the top of his game you might as well put down your toys and listen. Votes: 0

there are so many days when living stops and pulls up and sits and waits like a train on the rails. Votes: 0

We use such big words to move nowhere. Votes: 0

Somebody at one of these places asked me: "What do you do? How do you write, create?" You don't, I told them. You "don't try". That's very important: not to try, either for Cadillacs, creation or immortality. You wait, and if nothing happens, you wait some more. It's like a bug high on the wall. You wait for it to come to you. When it gets close enough you reach out, slap out and kill it. Or if you like it's looks, you make a pet out of it. Votes: 0

I didn't feel that way about it. I had been playing with death for some time. I can't say we were the best of friends but we were well acquainted. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

People don't need love. What they need is success in one form or another. It can be love but it needn't be. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

terror finally becomes almost bearable but never quite terror creeps like a cat crawls like a cat across my mind Votes: 0

people are not good to each other. perhaps if they were our deaths would not be so sad. Votes: 0

Disneyland remains the central attraction of Southern California, but the graveyard remains our reality. Votes: 0

I always started a job with the feeling that I'd soon quit or be fired, and this gave ma a relaxex manner that was mistaken for intelligence or some secret power. Votes: 0

The world had somehow gone too far, and spontaneous kindness could never be so easy. Votes: 0

Love dries up, I thought as I walked back to the bathroom, even faster than sperm. Votes: 0

People don't do me much good. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

It was only the matter of a new voice. Nobody listened to an old voice anymore. Old voices became a part of one's self, like a fingernail. Votes: 0

the beautiful are found in the edge of a room crumpled into spiders and needles and silence and we can never understand why they left,they were so beautiful. they dont make it, the beautiful die young and leave the ugly to their ugly lives. Votes: 0

there was something about that city, though it didn't let me feel guilty that I had no feeling for the things so many others needed. it let me alone. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

a good book can make an almost impossible existence, liveable ( from 'the luck of the word' ) Votes: 0

What's wrong with assholes, baby? Votes: 0

there was something about that city, though it didn't let me feel guilty that I had no feeling for the things so many others needed. it let me alone. sitting up in my bed the lights out, hearing the outside sounds, lifting my cheap bottle of wine, letting the warmth of the grape enter me as I heard the rats moving about the room, I preferred them to humans. being lost, being crazy maybe is not so bad if you can be that way undisturbed. New Orleans gave me that. nobody ever called my name. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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? Votes: 0

from the beginning, through the middle years and up to the end: too bad, too bad, too bad. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Humanity, you never had it from the beginning." That was my motto. Votes: 0

There's nothing like privacy. You know, I like people. It's nice that they might like my books and all that...but I'm not the book, see? I'm the guy who wrote it, but I don't want them to come up and throw roses on me or anything. I want them to let me breathe. Votes: 0

I could read the great books but the great books don't interest me. Votes: 0

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! Votes: 0

The street to my left was backed up with traffic and I watched the people waiting patiently in the cars. There was almost always a man and a women, staring straight ahead, not talking. It was, finally, for everyone, a matter of waiting. You waited and you waited- for the hospital, the doctor, the plumber, the madhouse, the jail, papa death himself. First the signal red, then the signal was green. The citizens of the world ate food and watched t.v. and worried about their jobs or lack of the same, while they waited. Votes: 0

People just weren't interesting. Maybe they weren't supposed to be. But animals, birds, even insects were. I couldn't understand it. Votes: 0

As a recluse I couldn't bear traffic. It had nothing to do with jealousy, I simply disliked people, crowds, anywhere, except at my readings. People diminished me, they sucked me dry. Votes: 0

young or old, good or bad, I don't think anything dies as slow and as hard as a writer. Votes: 0

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 Votes: 0

Few beautiful women were willing to indicate in public that they belonged to someone. I had known enough women to realize this. I accepted them for what they were and love came hard and very seldom. When it did it was usually for the wrong reasons. One simply became tired of holding back love and let it go because it needed some place to go. Then, usually, there was trouble. Votes: 0

Do some living and get yourself a typewriter. Votes: 0

yes, Wagner and the storm intermix with the wine as nights like this run up my wrists and up into my head and back down into the gut Votes: 0

I went over to see Marina two or three or four times a week. I knew as long as I could see the girl I would be all right…. Soon after, I got a letter from Fay. She and the child were living in a hippie commune in New Mexico. It was a nice place, she said. Marina would be able to breathe there. She enclosed a little drawing the girl had made for me. Votes: 0

the best often die by their own hand just to get away, and those left behind can never quite understand why anybody would ever want to get away from them Votes: 0

there's no defense except all the errors made Votes: 0

but isn't there always one good thing to look back on? think of how many cups of coffee we drank together. Votes: 0

I can't blame her. but wonder why she's here with me? where are the other guys? how can you be lucky? having someone the others have abandoned? Votes: 0

You were destroyed by what you befriended. Votes: 0

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! Votes: 0

how can you be true and kind at the same time? how? Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

the grace is being able to like rock music, symphony music, jazz … anything that contains the original energy of joy. Votes: 0

The wisdom to quit is all we have left. Votes: 0

Love is a form of prejudice. I have too many other prejudices. Votes: 0

Once in a dream I saw a snake swallowing its own tail, it swallowed and swallowed until it got halfway round, and there it stopped and there it stayed, it was stuffed with its own self. Some fix, that. We only have ourselves to go on, and it’s enough… Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

I'm only interested in poetry. Votes: 0

I can see where creation often stops while the body still lives and often does not care to. the death of life before life dies. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

you fall into the mirror, come through the other side staring at a lightbulb. Votes: 0

human relationships simply aren't durable. I think back to the women in my life. they seem non-existent. Votes: 0

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 Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Was I the only person who was distracted by this future without a chance? Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

you are yesterday's bouquet so sadly raided Votes: 0

… and we are in bed together laughing and we don’t care about anything. Votes: 0

when the phone rings I too would like to hear words that might ease some of this. Votes: 0

the people are the biggest horror show on earth, have been for centuries. Votes: 0

Angels, we have grown apart. Votes: 0

There is no hurry. Time means nothing to you. Votes: 0

and the color in my eyes has gone back into the sea. Votes: 0

since some people had told me that I was ugly, I always preferred shade to the sun, darkness to light Votes: 0

and love was lightning and remembrance Votes: 0

magic persists without us no matter what we may do to try to spoil it Votes: 0

That's what friendship is, sharing the prejudice of experience. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

I knew exactly what I was doing: I was doing nothing. because I knew there was nothing to do. Votes: 0

I went home each night dizzy and sick. He was murdering me with the sound of his voice. Votes: 0

We are Born like this Into this Into these carefully mad wars Into the sight of broken factory windows of emptiness Into bars where people no longer speak to each other Into fist fights that end as shootings and knifings Born into this Into hospitals which are so expensive that it’s cheaper to die Into lawyers who charge so much it’s cheaper to plead guilty Into a country where the jails are full and the madhouses closed Into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes Votes: 0

There's nothing unusual about love. Votes: 0

Lawyers, doctors, plumbers, they all made the money. Writers? Writers starved. Writers suicided. Writers went mad. Votes: 0

the sea is made of blood Votes: 0

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 Votes: 0

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) Votes: 0

the whole world is caught in her glance and at last the universe is magnificent. Votes: 0

I am for the small man who has not forgotten, for the man who loves his beer and his women and his sunlight Votes: 0

The years have gone by quickly. Death sits in the seat next to me. We make a lovely couple. Votes: 0

You've got to rise from the floor alone or fall back alone. Votes: 0

People in love often become edgy, dangerous. They lose their sense of perspective. Votes: 0

Death meant little to me. It was the last joke in a series of bad jokes. Votes: 0

Beware Those Who Are ALWAYS READING BOOKS Votes: 0

I lie as truthfully as I can. Votes: 0

Before you kill something make sure you have something better to replace it with... Votes: 0

I was drawn to all the wrong things: I liked to drink, I was lazy, I didn't have a god, politics, ideas, ideals. Votes: 0

When I'm drinking around people, I tend to get silly or pugnacious or wild, which can cause problems. Votes: 0

I hid in bars, because I didn't want to hide in factories. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

I took no pride in my solitude; but I was dependent on it. The darkness of the room was like sunlight to me. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

There's nothing to mourn about death any more than there is to mourn about the growing of a flower. What is terrible is not death but the lives people live or don't live up until their death. Votes: 0

Most people are not ready for death, theirs or anybody elses. Votes: 0

I was fairly poor but most of my money went for wine and classical music. I loved to mix the two together. Votes: 0

I should think that many of our poets, the honest ones, will confess to having no manifesto. It is a painful confession but the art of poetry carries its own powers without having to break them down into critical listings. I do not mean that poetry should be raffish and irresponsible clown tossing off words into the void. But the very feeling of a good poem carries its own reason for being... Art is its own excuse, and it’s either Art or it’s something else. It’s either a poem or a piece of cheese. Votes: 0

It's hot tonight and half the neighborhood is drunk. the other half is dead. if I have any advice about writing poetry it's - don't. I'm going to send out for some fried chicken. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

I was only photographing in words the reality of it all. Votes: 0

I am this fiery snail crawling home. Votes: 0

Alcohol is probably one of the greatest things to arrive upon the earth - alongside of me. Votes: 0

It was better for me when I could imagine greatness in others, even if it wasn't always there. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

I'll use the knives for spreading jam, and the gas to warm my greying love. Votes: 0

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! Votes: 0

I had no Freedom. I had nothing. Votes: 0

Let' em learn or let' em die Votes: 0

It’s hard to drink when you dance. And it’s hard to dance when you drink. Votes: 0

Experience can dull. With most men experience is a series of mistakes; the more experience you have the less you know. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

nobody ever finds the one Votes: 0

but as God said, crossing his legs, I see where I have made plenty of poets but not so very much poetry. Votes: 0

Well, the rain had stopped but the pain was still there. Votes: 0

I knew it would be you Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

First paycheck I get, I thought, I'm going to get myself a room near the downtown L.A. Public Library. Votes: 0

i dunno," i said, "but i have an idea that people who don't think too much tend to look younger longer Votes: 0

I was a bore and didn't know when to smile or fake it. Or rather worse, I did but didn't. Votes: 0

in this room the hours of love still make shadows. Votes: 0

Sweet Christ, you must know that a man will go further for any poem than for any woman ever born. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

It's just that the grape has me down. Votes: 0

Fiction is an improvement on life Votes: 0

there must be a way. surely there must be a way that we have not yet thought of. who put this brain inside of me? it cries it demands it says that there is a chance. it will not say "no. Votes: 0

It is possible to be truly mad and to still exist upon scraps of life. Votes: 0

i never understood society. i undersand that it works somehow and that it functions as a reality and that its realities are necessary to keep us from worse realities. but all i sense are that are plenty of police and jails and judges and laws and that what is meant to protect me is breaking me down... Votes: 0

You just rebel against everything. How are you going to survive? I don't know. I'm already tired. Votes: 0

my greatest problem was stamps, envelopes, paper and wine, with the world on the edge of World War II. Votes: 0

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 Votes: 0

If I'm an ass, I should say so. If I don't, somebody else will. If I say it first, that disarms them. Votes: 0

My flesh looked like it wasn't trying. It looked like it hated being part of me. Votes: 0

I call 'em complaining machines. Things are never right with a guy to them. And man, when you throw that hysteria in there ... forget it. I gotta get out, get in the car, and go. Anywhere. Get a cup of coffee somewhere. Anywhere. Anything but another woman. I guess they're just built different, right? Votes: 0

This incompleteness is all we have. Votes: 0

It seemed better to delay thinking. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Style is the answer to everything. A fresh way to approach a dull or dangerous thing Votes: 0

A man who can beat the horses can do anything he makes up his mind to do. Votes: 0

What's genius? I don't know but I do know that the difference between a madman and a professional is that a pro does as well as he can within what he has set out to do and a madman does exceptionally well at what he can't help doing. Votes: 0

Finally there is nothing here for death to take away. Votes: 0

there's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I'm too clever, I only let him out at night sometimes when everybody's asleep. I say, I know that you're there, so don't be sad. then I put him back, but he's singing a little in there, I haven't quite let him die and we sleep together like that with our secret pact and it's nice enough to make a man weep, but I don't weep, do you? Votes: 0

... to die on a kitchen floor at 7 o'clock in the morning while other people are frying eggs is not so rough unless it happens to you. Votes: 0

they thought I had guts they were wrong I was only frightened of more important things Votes: 0

And it seems people should not build houses anymore it seems people should stop working and sit in small rooms on second floors under electric lights without shades; it seems there is a lot to forget and a lot not to do and in drugstores, markets, bars, the people are tired, they do not want to move, and I stand there at night and look through this house and the house does not want to be built Votes: 0

You have my soul and I have your money Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

agony sometimes changes form but it never ceases for anybody. Votes: 0

I was their bar freak, they needed me to make themselves feel better. just like, at times, I needed that graveyard. Votes: 0

You don't go on "probably" when love and guns are in hand. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

The poet, as a rule, is a half-man - a sissy, not a real person, and he is in no shape to lead real men in matters of blood, or courage. Votes: 0

A day of minor profit or prophet led to a night of drunkenness. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

I can't think of any poet-recluses outside of one dead Jeffers. [Robinson Jeffers] The rest of them want to slobber over each other and hug each other. It appears to me that I am the last of the poet-recluses. Votes: 0

Figuring the average poet starts at 16, I am 23. Votes: 0

In a more universal sense, we only get one thing. You know...a head stone if we're lucky; if not, green grass. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

I guess for me Hemingway is a lot like it is for others: he goes down well when we are young. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0