What I needed seemed to be absent everywhere.

— Charles Bukowski

[…] keep on doing it until you die or it dies in you. There is no other way. And there never was.

— Charles Bukowski

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.

— Charles Bukowski

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

— Charles Bukowski

I stopped looking for a dream girl, I just wanted one that wasn't a nightmare.

— Charles Bukowski

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.

— Charles Bukowski

Stop insisting on clearing your head — clear your fucking heart instead.

— Charles Bukowski

This incompleteness is all we have.

— Charles Bukowski

People empty me. I have to get away to refill.

— Charles Bukowski