Charles Bukowski Quotes

When you come from so many damaged places you don't ever want to spiral back there, so you gotta continue to check yourself.

When I went to prison, for three years I didn't say a word to another human being until, going into the fourth year, when I realized, 'You know what, I have to find a way to live.'

What they don't know is that I went over the edge years ago, and lived to tell the tale.

It is when you are asking about something that you realize you yourself have survived it, and so you must carry it, or fashion it into a thing that carries itself.

It's been stress and drama for a long time now, man. So much has happened. I got shot five times by some dudes who were trying to rub me out. But God is great. He let me come back. But, when I look at the last few years, it's not like everybody just did me wrong. I made some mistakes. But I'm ready to move on.

I've never stabbed, hurt, killed, stolen, anything, but I went to jail for a year. What is that? My pastor said to me the fact that I'm not living under a bridge as a crazy woman, talking to myself, is amazing.

Oprah is wildly successful, and she's a brilliant businesswoman. She's also somebody who's overcome a ton of demons in her own life, and that's really what shaped her. I think the same could be said for me.

It takes far less courage to kill yourself than it takes to make yourself wake up one more time. It's harder to stay where you are than to get out. For everyone but you, that is.

Life's fairly excruciating. Painful things happen. Every now and then, you drag yourself out of the stream and stand on the bank gasping for air. I think that's how I work.

Walt Disney got away with portraying me in the light that they were portraying me in. I have always been a fighter, so... But I have no regrets, man. It's just like God brought me through the drugs, I know he'll bring me through this.

People ask me, what was your rock bottom? I say, pick.

I have spent much of my adult life flinching with pain as I tried to pull out the threads that bound the shadows of my past to me.

I never got to the point of needing drugs or thinking about giving up myself.

I look back at myself, this innocent person, and I think, 'Gosh, she's okay.' I handled a lot, and I'm still here.

I'm a creative person who had a lot of dark time in my life. I can still get to it: I can still go to a relationship or a time when things weren't great. But it's getting further and further from me.

I'm surprised that I've survived my own dysfunction, really.

Women have to air it out, hold on to it, work on it.

Mostly I'm telling people that they don't have to be victims.

Anyone who cannot come to terms with his life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate... but with his other hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins.

Art gives us the opportunity to have clarity as well as hope that we might be able to survive a situation, or hope that we can find a way out of it without too much more injury to ourselves.

I did go through a bit of a dark time during the years I was trying to be a mom. But I'm basically a very positive person.

When you go through hell, your own personal hell, and you have lost - loss of fame, loss of money, loss of career, loss of family, loss of love, loss of your own identity that I experienced in my own life - and you've been able to face the demons that have haunted you... I appreciate everything that I have.

My dad was a great man, and I loved him, but he had some demons he fought. It was tough to see some of those things as a kid, but I believe God doesn't save you from things; he saves you through them.

I can laugh at my own grief.

I think we're all survivors, to be honest. I mean, some of us more than others - some of us have to survive far more horrendous things than others. It's all relative: whatever your experience is.