Quotes from 'More Notes From A Dirty Old Man' by Charles Bukowski

The face, open with passion, like a flower ripped open with the fingers from the bud, a kind of fire-cheating, and the body, the body was nothing but SEX, sex standing still jumping singing looking flowing humming.

A woman practices rearing the child by taming the man first.

Love is a form of selfishness. Love is an excuse for cowards to quit.

I nailed her in the center of the rug, I had her on the cross, it was too late for her, she was on the spike, ripped ripped.

Marriage is a contract to live in dullness until death do us part.

Hundreds of thousands of lonely and frustrated men and women living mostly without sex and certainly without love, working at jobs they hate, running red lights, crashing into fire plugs and store windows, gambling, drinking, taking dope, smoking 2 packs a day, masturbating, going crazy, going crazier and crazier, getting religious, buying goldfish and cats and monkeys... Hundreds and thousands of lonely and frustrated men and women who settle for Disneyland instead of love, who settle for a baseball game instead of sex... Hundreds of thousands of lonely and frustrated men and women who'll pass each other on the sidewalk and be afraid to look at each other's faces, at each other's eyes for fear they'll be accused of being on the make. Blocks and walls of horror-movie magazines, girly magazines, nudey magazines, nude movies, vibrators, dirty jokes - everything but contact and real action.

We murder ourselves with sex and occupation; the madhouses crawl with sexually maladjusted and occupationally-destroyed people. Answers? Who knows? We're structured in. The bars are heavy.

Sometimes when I'm talking I improve on things to make them better. Some people might call it lying; I call it an art-form.

I find that when the pain gets bad enough there are only three things to do - get drunk, kill yourself or laugh. I usually get drunk and laugh.

There are really only two types of people in this world: the noble and the fucked.

"What do you know about sex?"
"Plenty."
"O.K., what is it?
"It's something to do to make yourself feel good so you can go on and do all the things that don't make you feel so good."

Sex was doing what you weren't supposed to do. That's one reason marriage didn't work; it became a job instead of a raid into the unknown.

It revolved with the power of the mare who knew she was there, still dangerous and damned able; not just able to catch the cock but the soul, too.

I knew that any of us could get lost away from the crowd, some of us even wanted to.

Many of the famous are famous not because their work is excellent and original but because the masses identify with the output. And they don't identify with it because it's real but because it is false and most of them are false in their ideals, their actions, their lives.

He is a carbon copy of the masses.

I know that I am supposed to love my fellow man but I don't. I don't hate him; I often dislike him; I just don't want him about. I feel better alone.

I loved Solitude. Still do. I grow when I'm alone. People diminish me. Especially men, they seem quite unoriginal. Women, at times, are useful. Also they are funny and tragic. But too many continued hours and days with them leads to madness.

Nothing diminishes me like the crowd.

I have certain inherent rights to oneness and that I am my own keeper.

Brilliant men are created out of desperate circumstances; fools are also.

Fame is too often the result of bad public taste; Immorality too often a matter of poor critical judgement.

A whore is a woman who takes more than she gives. A man who takes more than he gives is called a businessman.

When agony of all the people is heard, nothing will be done.

The best people are the ones you never meet.

A criminal might be defined as one outnumbered by those who generally don't do what he does except in secret or different ways.

It's exactly as good as it's ever going to get.