# Charles Bukowski's best quotes (with the book they come from)

The intellectual and the artist, the bluebird in his heart and 'what a circus!': the most quoted lines of Charles Bukowski, from Notes of a Dirty Old Man, Factotum, Hollywood and his late poems.

- 121 votes · 12 items
- Feb 2, 2022 · hiker.lost
- https://even.best/en/l/4976/charles-bukowski-s-best-quotes-with-the-book-they-come-from

## Top 12

1. **An intellectual is a man who says a simple thing in a difficult way; an artist is a man who says a difficult thing in a simple way.** (16 · ▲16 ▼0) — Notes of a Dirty Old Man (1969).
2. **Money is like sex. It seems much more important when you don't have any.** (12 · ▲12 ▼0) — Hollywood (1989).
3. **If you want to know who your friends are, get yourself a jail sentence.** (11 · ▲13 ▼2) — Notes of a Dirty Old Man (1969).
4. **We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't.** (7 · ▲9 ▼2) — The Captain Is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship (1998).
5. **What is terrible is not death but the lives people live or don't live up until their death.** (7 · ▲9 ▼2) — The Captain Is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship (1998).
6. **My ambition is handicapped by my laziness.** (7 · ▲9 ▼2) — Factotum (1975).
7. **Baby, I'm a genius but nobody knows it but me.** (5 · ▲7 ▼2) — Factotum (1975).
8. **That was all a man needed: hope. It was a lack of hope that discouraged a man.** (5 · ▲6 ▼1) — Factotum (1975).
9. **There's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I'm too tough for him.** (3 · ▲7 ▼4) — Poem "Bluebird", in The Last Night of the Earth Poems (1992).
10. **Any damn fool can beg up some kind of job; it takes a wise man to make it without working.** (3 · ▲4 ▼1) — Post Office (1971).
11. **I've never met another man I'd rather be.** (3 · ▲4 ▼1) — In the documentary Bukowski: Born Into This (2003).
12. **Hell was what you made it.** (0 · ▲4 ▼4) — Pulp (1994).

How is this ranking ordered? By people's votes: each ▲ adds a point and each ▼ takes one away. Anyone can vote and add what is missing.