You Get So Alone At Times That It Just Makes Sense

by Charles Bukowski

I return upstairs and my two cats follow me, they are fine fellows, we have no discontent, we have no arguments, we listen to the same music, never vote for a president.

the problem that I’ve found with most poets that I have known is that they’ve never had an 8 hour job and there is nothing that will put a person more in touch with the realities than an 8 hour job.

let them have the stage so long as I need not be in the audience.

you know the old saying: it’s all a matter of taste and either they’re right and I’m wrong or I’m right and they’re all wrong or maybe it’s some place in between. most of the people in the world could care less and I often feel the same way.

I am sad for the dead and I am sad for the living but not for my 5 cats

for those readers now sick at heart believing that I’m a contented man— please have some cheer: agony sometimes changes form but it never ceases for anybody.

I believe that to be the world’s greatest living writer there must be something terribly wrong with you. I don’t even want to be the world’s greatest dead writer. just being dead would be fair enough.

Paris is the world and the world is Paris. drink to it and because of it.

we are trying to beat the percentages and each day some must fall so that others can go on. (the track is just like anyplace else only there it usually happens more quickly.)

I wish you luck in bed and out but not in mine thank you.

having nothing to struggle against they have nothing to struggle for.

when confronted with dutiful policemen or women in rancor I have nothing to say to them for if I truly began it would end in somebody’s death: theirs or mine so I let them have their little victories which they need far more than I do.

I live with a lady and four cats and some days we all get along. some days I have trouble with one of the cats. other days I have trouble with two of the cats. other days, three. some days I have trouble with all four of the cats and the lady: ten eyes looking at me as if I was a dog.