20 Thought-Provoking Quotes By Charles Bukowski

This article contains 20 thought-provoking quotations by the German-American writer Charles Bukowski.

“An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.”

“Poetry is what happens when nothing else can.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Beware of those who seek constant crowds; they are nothing alone.”

“He asked, What makes a man a writer? Well, I said, it’s simple. You either get it down on paper, or jump off a bridge.”

“Fiction is an improvement on life.”

“Watching the bull get the matador, that’s the best.”

“Some people don’t like anybody who is famous. Some people don’t like anybody who isn’t.”

“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.”

“People run from rain but sit in bathtubs full of water.”

“I guess the only time most people think about injustice is when it happens to them.”

“Bad taste creates many more millionaires than good taste.”

“Sometimes you just have to pee in the sink.”

“In my work, as a writer, I only photograph, in words, what I see.”

“You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.”

“Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must live.”

“In this land some of us fuck more than we die but most of us die better than we fuck.”

“Do you hate people?” “I don’t hate them…I just feel better when they’re not around.”

“Cheer up. Maybe you’ll be famous after you’re dead.”

Conclusion

I hope you find these quotations thought-provoking.

You can also download a file containing all 20 of the above images if you want to use them as wallpaper on your computer, for example – just click here.

(This file is a Zip file, so if you don’t have the means to unzip it, you can get a free trial of WinZip here.)

Additional Resources

These are suggestions for those who wish to delve deeper into any of the above:

1. Books by Charles Bukowski

PS: The image at the top of this article is used courtesy of Emobional.