Drinking is an emotional thing. It joggles you out of the standardism of everyday life, out of everything being the same. It yanks you out of your body and your mind and throws you against the wall. I have the feeling that drinking is a form of suicide where you’re allowed to return to life and begin all over the next day. It’s like killing yourself, and then you’re reborn. I guess I’ve lived about ten or fifteen thousand lives now. Charles Bukowski (via aortayou)

There’s nothing to mourn about death any more than there is to mourn about the growing of a flower. What is terrible is not death but the lives people live or don’t live up until their death. They don’t honor their own lives, they piss on their lives. They shit them away. Dumb fuckers. They concentrate too much on fucking, movies, money, family, fucking. Their minds are full of cotton. They swallow God without thinking, they swallow country without thinking. Soon they forget how to think, they let others think for them. Their brains are stuffed with cotton. They look ugly, they talk ugly, they walk ugly. Play them the great music of the centuries and they can’t hear it. Most people’s deaths are a sham. There’s nothing left to die. Charles Bukowski (via quotesandyouknowstuff)

But most men, fortunately, aren’t writers, or even cab drivers, and some men — many men— unfortunately aren’t anything. Charles Bukowski, Factotum.

These people are assholes, assholes! They have no intelligence! They don’t know how to think! They’re afraid of the mind! They’re sick! They’re cowards! They aren’t thinking men like you and me! Charles Bukowski, Factotum.

The idea, I decided, is not to think. But how do you stop thinking? Charles Bukowski,  Factotum.

… because if the poor aren’t decent to one another, nobody else is going to be. Charles Bukowski, Factotum.

Little by little our lives were falling apart. Charles Bukowski, Factotum.

Most of the evenings fell into a pattern. She’d argue, grab her purse and be gone out the door. It was effective; we had lived and loved together for too many days. I had to feel it and feel it I did. But I always had o let her go as I sat helpless in my chair and drank my whiskey and tuned in the radio to a bit of classical music. I knew she was out there and I knew there would be somebody else. Yet I had to let it happen, I had to let events take their own course. Charles Bukowski, Factotum.

I understood it too well now — that great lovers were always men of leisure. Charles Bukowski, Factotum.

Manny, what are you doing working in auto parts?”
“Resting. My ambition is handicapped by laziness. Charles Bukowski, Factotum.

I kept telling myself that all the women in the world weren’t whores, just mine. Charles Bukowski, Factotum.

You’re all there,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I’ve never met a man like you.”
“Oh yeah?”
“The others are only ten per cent there, or twenty per cent, you’re all there, all of you is very there, it’s so different.”
“I don’t know anything about it.”
“You’re a hooker, you can hook women. Charles Bukowski, Factotum.

Are you alone?”
“Yes.”
“There’s nobody?”
“Nobody. You know I can’t stand people. Charles Bukowski, Factotum.

… and she did everything in her power to show that she deserved him. Charles Bukowski, Factotum.