Charles Bukowski

"When women agree with me I always do the other thing."

"Without literature, life is hell."

"My heart is a thousand years old. I am not like other people."

"All we do is sleep, and eat and lay around and make love. We're like slugs. Slug-love, I call it."

"Isolation is a gift. Everything else is just a test of your endurance. You will be alone with the Gods. Your nights will flame with fire."

"She slammed the door andwas gone.I looked at the closed doorand at the doorknoband strangelyI didn't feelalone."

"Find what you love and let it kill you."

"Women were beyond me.They saw somethingdepraved.There was one waitressa little older thanI, she rather smiled,lingered when shebrought mycoffee.That was plenty for me, that wasenough.- Young in New Orleans."

"The cat is the beautiful devil."

"Censorship is the tool of those who have the need to hide actualities from themselves and from others. Their fear is only their inability to face what is real, and I can't vent any anger against them; I only feel this appalling sadness. Somewhere in their upbringing, they were shielded against the total facts of our existence."

"Endurance is more important than truth because without endurance there can't be any truth. And truth means going to the end like you mean it. That way, death itself comes up short when it grabs."

"(by the way . . . I realize I switch from present to past tense, and if you don't like it . . . Ram a nipple up your scrotum. -printer: leave this in.)."