Charles Bukowski Running Quotations

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.

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

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!

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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