"That's when I first learned that it wasn't enough to just do your job, you had to have an interest in it, even a passion for it."

"We have wasted History like a bunch of drunks shooting dice back in the men's crapper of the local bar."

"I walked around the library looking for books. I pulled them off the shelves, one by one. But they were all tricks. They were very dull. There were pages and pages of words that didn't say anything. Or if they did say something they took too long to say it and by the time they said it you already were too tired to have it matter at all. I tried book after book. Surely, out of all those books, there was one."

"I would be married, but I'd have no wife, I would be married to a single life."

"To think, somebody had suicided for that."

"Nothing's news.it's the same old thing indisguise.only one thing comes without adisguise and you only see itonce, ormaybe never.like getting hit by a freighttrain.makes us realize that all ourmoaning about long lost girlsin gingham dressesis not so importantafterall."

"I had also read somewhere that if a man didn't truly believe or understand what he was espousing, somehow he could do a more convincing job."

"The flesh covers the bone and they put a mind in there and sometimes a soul, and the women break vases against the walls and the men drink too much and nobody finds the one but keep looking crawling in and out of beds. flesh covers the bone and the flesh searches for more than flesh."

"Born into thisInto hospitals which are so expensive that it's cheaper to dieInto lawyers who charge so much it's cheaper to plead guiltyInto a country where the jails are full and the madhouses closedInto a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes..."

"Never get out of bed before noon."

"Can you remember who you were, before the world told you who you should be?"

"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."

"You could sit in there all day drinking coffee and they never asked you to leave no matter how bad you looked. They just asked the bums not to bring their wine and drink it there. Places like that gave you hope when there wasn t much hope."

"That's your response to everything: drink?""No, that's my response to nothing."

"I began to feel like a kept man and it felt great."

"People who eat 3 meals a day throughout lifehave never reallytastedFood..."

"Peace of mind and heartarriveswhen we accept what is:having beenborn into thisstrange lifewe must acceptthe wasted gamble of ourdaysand take some satisfaction inthe pleasure ofleaving it allbehind."

"Writing about a writer's block is better than not writing at all."

"You understand, we just don't fuck with truth."

"Sometimes things are just what they seem to be and that's all there is to it."

"I feel no grief for being called somethingwhichI am not;in fact, it's enthralling, somehow, like a goodback rub."

"I wait on my fix:I am a poetry junkie."

"She was perfect, pure maddening sex, and she knew it, and she played on it, dripped it, and allowed you to suffer for it."

"When I begin to doubt my ability to work the word, I simply read another writer and know I have nothing to worry about. My contest is only with myself, to do it right, with power, and force, and delight, and gamble."

"Sometimes when everything seems atits worstwhen all conspiresand gnawsand the hours, days, weeksyearsseem wasted " stretched there upon my bedin the darklooking upward at the ceilingi get what many will consider anobnoxious thought:it's still nice to beBukowski."

"To do a dull thing with style-now that's what I call art."

"I don't know. It's been terribly hard for me. How do I know you won't do it again?''Nobody is ever quite sure of what they will do. You aren't sure what you might do."

"Most people are much better at saying things in letters than in conversation, and some people can write artistic, inventive letters, but when they try a poem or story or novel they become pretentious."

"The rent is a little higher herebut so far I've been able to pay itand that's a miracle toolike still maybe being sanewhile thinking of guns and sidewalksand old ladies in libraries."

"You bitch," I whispered, "I love you." Then I came."

"We don't even ask happiness, just a little less pain."

"It got so bad that Al thoughtmaybe it washimso he went to a shrinkand askedand the shrink said,"you're one of the sanest menI've ever met."poor Al.that made him feelworse than ever."

"I kept telling myself that all the women in the world weren t whores, just mine."

"All people start tocome apart finallyand there it is:just empty ashtrays in a roomor wisps of hair on a combin the dissolving moonlight."

"I tell you such fine music waits in the shadows of hell."

"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."

"The way to create art is to burn and destroyordinary concepts and to substitute themwith new truths that run down from the top of the headand out of the heart."

"I liked to fuck too, but it wasn't my religion. There were too many ridiculous and tragic things about it. People didn't seem to know how to handle it. So they made a toy out of it. A toy that destroyed people."

"I went over to see Marina two or three or four times a week. I knew as long as I could see the girl I would be all right. Soon after, I got a letter from Fay. She and the child were living in a hippie commune in New Mexico. It was a nice place, she said. Marina would be able to breathe there. She enclosed a little drawing the girl had made for me."

"People just weren't interesting. Maybe they weren't supposed to be. But animals, birds, even insects were. I couldn't understand it."

"Being alone never felt right. sometimes it felt good, but it never felt right."

"Why does a man destroy himself or what destroys him? I would have to judge that suicide is mostly the tool of the thinking man. The right to suicide should be the same as the right to love."

"We must bringour own lightto thedarkness."

"People don't need love. What they need is success in one form or another. It can be love but it needn't be."

"...still, I'm lucky: I feast on solitude, I will never miss the crowd. I could read the great books but the great books don't interest me. I sit in bed and wait for the whole thing to go one way or the other. just like everybody else."

"What is your advice to young writers? "Drink, fuck and smoke plenty of cigarettes."

"Aboutour argument tonightwhatever it wasaboutand no matterhow unhappyit made usfeelremember thatthere is acatsomewhereadjusting to thespace of itselfwith a delightfulwonderment ofeasiness.in other wordsmagic persistswithout usno matter whatwe doagainst it."

"The first place smelled like work, so I took the second."

"In the old days, before I was married, or knew a lot of women, I would just pull down all the shades and go to bed for three or four days. I'd get up to shit. I'd eat a can of beans, go back to bed, just stay there for three or four days. Then I'd put on my clothes and I'd walk outside, and the sunlight was brilliant, and the sounds were great. I felt powerful, like a recharged battery. But you know the first bring-down? The first human face I saw on the sidewalk, I lost half my charge right there."

"Basically, that's why I wrote: to save my ass, to save my ass from the madhouse, from the streets, from myself."