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my mother, poor fish, wanting to be happy, beaten two or three times a week, 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 the saddest smile I ever saw

Charles Bukowski

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Charles Bukowski
Age: 73 †
Born: 1920
Born: August 16
Died: 1994
Died: March 9
Actor
Author
Autobiographer
Columnist
Diarist
Journalist
Novelist
Poet
Screenwriter
Writer
Henry Charles Bukowski
Buk
charles bukowski
Shows
Telling
Three
Saws
Saddest
Two
Week
Henry
Ever
Poor
Beaten
Would
Happy
Fish
Show
Fishes
Times
Wanting
Mother
Smile

More quotes by Charles Bukowski

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I will put on my shoes and shirt and get out of here - it'll be better for all of us.
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I feel no grief for being called something which I am not in fact, it's enthralling, somehow, like a good back rub
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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.
Charles Bukowski
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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.
Charles Bukowski
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Anybody can be a non-drunk. It takes a special talent to be a drunk. It takes endurance. Endurance is more important than truth.
Charles Bukowski
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People just weren't interesting. Maybe they weren't supposed to be. But animals, birds, even insects were. I couldn't understand it.
Charles Bukowski
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If you're losing your soul and you know it, then you've still got a soul left to lose.
Charles Bukowski
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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.
Charles Bukowski
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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.
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I had noticed that both in the very poor and very rich extremes of society the mad were often allowed to mingle freely.
Charles Bukowski
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There is nothing that teaches you more than regrouping after failure and moving on.
Charles Bukowski
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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?
Charles Bukowski
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There's a light somewhere. It may not be much light but it beats the darkness.
Charles Bukowski
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I am not like other people. I am burning in hell. The hell of myself.
Charles Bukowski
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I don't think I'll travel anymore. Travel is nothing but an inconvenience. There is always enough trouble where you are.
Charles Bukowski
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the grace is being able to like rock music, symphony music, jazz … anything that contains the original energy of joy.
Charles Bukowski
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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.
Charles Bukowski
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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.
Charles Bukowski
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morning night and noon the traffic moves through and the murder and treachery of friends and lovers and all the people move through you. pain is the joy of knowing the unkindest truth that arrives without warning. life is being alone death is being alone. even the fools weep morning night and noon.
Charles Bukowski
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I am aware that a computer can’t create a poem, but neither can a typewriter.
Charles Bukowski