Charles Bukowski's best quotes (with the book they come from)
The top 3 according to 121 votes from people: 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. · Money is like sex. It seems much more important when you don't have any. · If you want to know who your friends are, get yourself a jail sentence.. (Updated Feb 2, 2022.)
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.
Top 12
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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.
Notes of a Dirty Old Man (1969).
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2
Money is like sex. It seems much more important when you don't have any.
Hollywood (1989).
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3
If you want to know who your friends are, get yourself a jail sentence.
Notes of a Dirty Old Man (1969).
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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.
The Captain Is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship (1998).
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5
What is terrible is not death but the lives people live or don't live up until their death.
The Captain Is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship (1998).
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6
My ambition is handicapped by my laziness.
Factotum (1975).
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7
Baby, I'm a genius but nobody knows it but me.
Factotum (1975).
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8
That was all a man needed: hope. It was a lack of hope that discouraged a man.
Factotum (1975).
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9
There's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I'm too tough for him.
Poem "Bluebird", in The Last Night of the Earth Poems (1992).
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10
Any damn fool can beg up some kind of job; it takes a wise man to make it without working.
Post Office (1971).
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11
I've never met another man I'd rather be.
In the documentary Bukowski: Born Into This (2003).
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12
Hell was what you made it.
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.
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Comments (1)
the bluebird one gets me every time. read it at 3am once and had to put the book down