Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I could never accept life as it was, I could never gobble down all its poisons bu there were parts, tenuous magic parts open for the asking.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Even though I write about the human race, the further away from them, the better I feel. Two miles is great; two thousand miles is beautiful.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
…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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Your parents don't give you much love, do they?' 'I don't need that stuff,' I told her. 'Henry, everybody needs love.' 'I don't need anything.' 'You poor boy.
The male, for all his bravado and exploration, is the loyal one, the one who generally feels love. The female is skilled at betrayal and torture and damnation.
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.
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
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!
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.
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
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.