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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.

Charles Bukowski

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Charles Bukowski
Age: 73 †
Born: 1920
Born: August 16
Died: 1994
Died: March 9
Actor
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Journalist
Novelist
Poet
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Henry Charles Bukowski
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charles bukowski
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Letters
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More quotes by 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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Basically, that's why I wrote: to save my ass, to save my ass from the madhouse, from the streets, from myself.
Charles Bukowski
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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?
Charles Bukowski
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For each Joan of Arc there is a Hitler perched at the other end of the teeter-totter.
Charles Bukowski
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…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.
Charles Bukowski
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They never pay the slaves enough so they can get free, just enough so they can stay alive and come back to work.
Charles Bukowski
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The Artist, an ancient sage had once said, is always sitting on the doorsteps of the rich.
Charles Bukowski
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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
Charles Bukowski
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one can never be sure whether it's good poetry or bad acid
Charles Bukowski
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Let' em learn or let' em die
Charles Bukowski
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Lighting new cigarettes, pouring more drinks. It has been a beautiful fight. Still is.
Charles Bukowski
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I heard an airplane passing overhead. I wished I was on it.
Charles Bukowski
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It is possible to be truly mad and to still exist upon scraps of life.
Charles Bukowski
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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.
Charles Bukowski
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Careful poetry and careful people live only long enough to die safely.
Charles Bukowski
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I took no pride in my solitude but I was dependent on it. The darkness of the room was like sunlight to me.
Charles Bukowski
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I am a dolt of a man, easily made happy or even stupidly happy almost without cause and left alone I am mostly content.
Charles Bukowski
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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.
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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Bad poetry is caused by people who sit down and think, Now I am going to write a Poem.
Charles Bukowski