Factotum

by Charles Bukowski

“Have you ever been in love?” “Love is for real people.” “You sound real.” “I dislike real people.” “You dislike them?” “I hate them.”

Chinaski

I thought of good steaks, long rides up winding driveways that led to beautiful homes. Ease. Trips to Europe. Fine women. Were they that much more clever than I? The only difference was money, and the desire to accumulate it.

Chinaski 2

My Beerdrunk Soul is Sadder Than All The Dead Christmas Trees Of The World.

Chinaski 3

Frankly, I was horrified by life, at what a man had to do simply in order to eat, sleep, and keep himself clothed. So I stayed in bed and drank. When you drank the world was still out there, but for the moment it didn’t have you by the throat.

Chinaski 4

She hiked her skirt higher. It was like the beginning of life and laughter, it was the real meaning of the sun.

Chinaski 5

I was suddenly conscious of the nails in the soles of my scruffy shoes pressing up into the soles of my feet.

Chinski 7

I understood it too well now—that great lovers were always men of leisure. I fucked better as a bum than as a puncher of timeclocks.

Chinaski 9

“People don’t need love. What they need is success in one form or another. It can be love but it needn’t be.”

Chinaski 11

“Honor the dead, young man.” “Why not honor the living?

Chinaski 12

How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?

Chinaski 13

For each Joan of Arc there is a Hitler perched at the other end of the teeter-totter.

Chinaski 13

She was desperate and she was choosey at the same time and, in a way, beautiful, but she didn’t have quite enough going for her to become what she imagined herself to be.

Chinaski 12