Ham On Rye Charles Bukowski Quotes

What a weary time those years were -- to have the desire and the need to live but not the ability.

I guess the only time most people think about injustice is when it happens to them.

I had noticed that both in the very poor and very rich extremes of society the mad were often allowed to mingle freely.

It was a joy! Words weren't dull, words were things that could make your mind hum. If you read them and let yourself feel the magic, you could live without pain, with hope, no matter what happened to you.

I often stood in front of the mirror alone, wondering how ugly a person could get.

The best thing about the bedroom was the bed. I liked to stay in bed for hours, even during the day with covers pulled up to my chin. It was good in there, nothing ever occurred in there, no people, nothing.

Everything else just kept picking and picking, hacking away. And nothing was interesting, nothing. The people were restrictive and careful, all alike. And I've got to live with these fuckers for the rest of my life, I thought.

I knew I was strong, and maybe like they said, "crazy." But I had this feeling inside of me that something real was there.

News travels fast in places where nothing much ever happens.

You are thirty minutes late." "Yes." "Would you be thirty minutes late to a wedding or a funeral?" "No." "Why not, pray tell?" "Well, if the funeral was mine I'd have to be on time. If the wedding was mine it would be my funeral.

Fiction is an improvement on life

The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose, they sliced a little more off you, until there was nothing left. At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole goddamned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidate who reminded them most of themselves.

It seemed better to delay thinking.

Getting drunk was good. I decided that I would always like getting drunk. It took away the obvious and maybe if you could get away from the obvious often enough, you wouldn't become so obvious yourself.

So, that’s what they wanted: lies. Beautiful lies. That’s what they needed. People were fools. It was going to be easy for me.

You just rebel against everything. How are you going to survive? I don't know. I'm already tired.

At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole god-damned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidate who reminded them most of themselves.

People don't do me much good.

They laughed. Things were funny. They weren't afraid to care. There was no sense to life, to the structure of things.

I had no interests. I had no interest in anything. I had no idea how I was going to escape. At least the others had some taste for life. They seemed to understand something that I didn’t understand. Maybe I was lacking. It was possible. I often felt inferior. I just wanted to get away from them. But there was no place to go. Suicide? Jesus Christ, just more work. I felt like sleeping for five years but they wouldn’t let me.

Why did I come here? I thought. Why is it always only a matter of choosing between something bad and something worse?

I made practice runs down to skid row to get ready for my future.

They were beautiful nothings

just heard a commercial which told me Farmer John smokes his own bacon. now, there's one tough son of a bitch.

All a guy needed was a chance. Somebody was alway controlling who got a chance and who didn't.

Turgenev was a very serious fellow but he could make me laugh because a truth first encountered can be very funny. When someone else's truth is the same as your truth, and he seems to be saying it just for you, that's great.

It didn't pay to trust another human being. Humans didn't have it, whatever it took.

since some people had told me that I was ugly, I always preferred shade to the sun, darkness to light

I read my books at night, like that, under the quilt with the overheated reading lamp. Reading all those good lines while suffocating. It was magic.

I had no interests. I had no interests in anything. I had no idea how I was going to escape. At least the others had some taste for life. They seemed to understand something that I didn't understand. Maybe I was lacking. It was possible. I often felt inferior. I just wanted to get away from them. But there was no place to go. Suicide? Jesus Christ, just more work. I felt like sleeping for five years but they wouldn't let me.

Dying in a a war never stopped wars from happening.

That the young rich smell the stink of the poor and learn to find it a bit amusing. They had to laugh, otherwise it would be too terrifying.

You can't overestimate the stupidity of the general public.

I was an Agnostic. Agnostics didn't have much to argue about.

Everything was eternally dreary, dismal, damned. Even the weather was insolent and bitchy.

The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose, they sliced a little bit more off you, until there was nothing left.

And my own affairs were as bad, as dismal, as the day I had been born. The only difference was that now I could drink now and then, though never often enough. Drink was the only thing that kept a man from feeling forever stunned and useless. Everything else just kept picking and picking, hacking away. And nothing was interesting, nothing. The people were restrictive and careful, all alike. And I've got to live with these fuckers for the rest of my life, I thought. God, they all had assholes and sexual organs and their mouths and their armpits. They shit and they chattered and they were dull as horse dung. The girls looked good from a distance, the sun shining through their dresses, their hair. But get up close and listen to their minds running out of their mouths, you felt like digging in under a hill and hiding out with a tommy-gun. I would certainly never be able to be happy, to get married, I could never have children. Hell, I couldn't even get a job as a dishwasher.

The park grass looked greener, the park benches looked better and the flowers were trying harder.

First paycheck I get, I thought, I'm going to get myself a room near the downtown L.A. Public Library.

I had no Freedom. I had nothing.

well, i don't know about you but I'm going to try everything! War, women, travel, marriage, children, the works. [...]. I want to know about things, what makes them work!

If you can hit a guy once, you can hit him twice.

Was I the only person who was distracted by this future without a chance?

Anything, anything to stop drowning in this dull, trivial and cowardly existence.

Your parents don't give you much love, do they?' 'I don't need that stuff,' I told her. 'Henry, everybody needs love.' 'I don't need anything.' 'You poor boy.

When I get down to my last dime I'll just walk over to skid row." "There are some real weirdos down there." "They're everywhere.

What good are you? What can you do? It has cost me a thousands of dollars to raise you, feed you, clothe you! Suppose I left you here on the street? Then what would you do?" "Catch butterflies

they are unhappy with what I have become

I didn't like anybody in that school. I think they knew that. I think that's why they disliked me. I didn't like the way they walked or looked or talked, but I didn't like my mother or father either. I still had the feeling of being surrounded by white empty space. There was always a slight nausea in my stomach.

What were doctors, lawyers, scientists? They were just men who allowed themselves to be deprived of their freedom to think and act as individuals.

I didn't say any more because when you hate, you don't beg...

Words weren’t dull, words were things that could make your mind hum. If you read them and let yourself feel the magic, you could live without pain, with hope, no matter what happened to you.

The dog approached again, cautiously. I found the bologna sandwich, ripped off a chunk, wiped the cheap watery mustard off, then placed it on the sidewalk. The dog walked up to the bit of sandwich, put his nose to it, sniffed, then turned and walked off. This time he didn't look back. He accelerated down the street. No wonder I had been depressed all my life. I wasn't getting proper nourishment.

There would never be a way for me to live comfortably with people. Maybe I'd become a monk. I'd pretend to believe in God and live in a cubicle, play an organ and stay drunk on wine. Nobody would fuck with me. I could go into a cell for months of meditation where I wouldn't have to look at anybody and they could just send in the wine.

What do you do all day? I just stay in bed. That's awful. No, it's nice. I like it.

Something had happened. The bath towels knew it, the bathtub and the toilet knew it. My father turned and walked out the door. He knew it. It was my last beating. From him.

I had decided against religion a couple of years back. If it were true, it made fools out of people, or it drew fools. And if it weren’t true, the fools were all the more foolish.

When someone else’s truth is the same as your truth, and he seems to be saying it just for you, that’s great.

But I didn't want to be anything anyhow. And I was certainly succeeding.

You’ll never be a writer if you hide from reality.

Women wanted men who made money, women wanted men of mark. How many classy women were living with skid row bums? Well, I didn't want a woman anyhow. Not to live with. How could men live with women? What did it mean? What I wanted was a cave in Colorado with three years' worth of foodstuffs and drink. I'd wipe my ass with sand. Anything, anything to stop drowning in this dull, trivial and cowardly existence.

What’s so nice about laying in bed all day?” “I don’t have to see anybody.” “You like that?” “Oh, yes.

A worthwhile day, I had killed two spiders, I had upset the balance of nature - now we would all be eaten up by the bugs and the flies.

Why is it always only a matter of choosing between something bad and something worse?

The moonlight came in with the sounds of the city: juke boxes, automobiles, curses, dogs barking, radios … We were all in it together.

And then along came Hemingway. What a thrill! He knew how to lay down a line. It was a joy. Words weren’t dull, words were things that could make your mind hum. If you read them and let yourself feel the magic, you could live without pain, with hope, no matter what happened to you.

It was hard for me to believe. When recess was over I sat in class and thought about it. My mother had a hole and my father had a dong that shot juice. How could they have things like that and walk around as if everything was normal, and talk about things, and then do it and not tell anybody?

I was still tough but it wasn’t the same. I had to withdraw. I watched people from afar, it was like a stage play. Only they were on stage and I was an audience of one.

Never bring a lot of money to where a poor man lives. He can only lose what little he has. On the other hand it is mathematically possible that he might win whatever you bring with you. What you must do, with money and the poor, is never let them get too close to one another.

There was no sense to life, to the structure of things. D.H. Lawrence had known that. You needed love, but not the kind of love most people used and were used up by. Old D.H. had known something. His buddy Huxley was just an intellectual fidget, but what a marvelous one. Better than G.B. Shaw with that hard keel of a mind always scraping bottom, his labored wit finally only a task, a burden on himself, preventing him from really feeling anything, his brilliant speech finally a bore, scraping the mind and the sensibilities. It was good to read them all though. It made you realize that thoughts and words could be fascinating, if finally useless.

I'd decided the campus was just a place to hide. There were some campus freaks who stayed on forever. The whole college scene was soft. They never told you what to expect out there in the real world. They just crammed you with theory and never told you how hard the pavements were. A college education could destroy an individual for life. Books could make you soft. When you put them down, and really went out there, then you needed to know what they never told you.

I waited. Nothing. I waited for God. I waited and waited. I believe I slept.

I avoided any direct reference to Jews and Blacks, who had never given me any trouble. All my trouble had come from white gentiles.

Daddy,' my mother asked, 'aren’t we going to run out of gas?' No there’s plenty of god-damned gas.' Where are we going?' I’m going to get some god-damed oranges!

Maybe I'd be a bank robber. Some god-damned thing. Something with flare, fire. You only had one shot. Why be a window washer?

The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose, they sliced a little bit more off you, until there was nothing left… The others had some taste for life. They seemed to understand something that I didn’t understand. Maybe I was lacking. It was possible. I often felt inferior. I just wanted to get away from them. But there was no place to go

What’s the easiest fucking thing to take?” I asked him. “Journalism. Those journalism majors don’t do anything.” “O.K., I’ll be a journalist.

I just wanted to get away from them. But there was no place to go. Suicide? Jesus Christ, just more work. I felt like sleeping for five years but they wouldn’t let me.

Beautiful lies. That’s what they needed. People were fools. It was going to be easy for me.

I didn't know if I was unhappy. I felt too miserable to be unhappy.

The first thing I remember my grandmother saying was, “I will bury all of you!

He stood there as I walked on. Never trust a man with a perfectly-trimmed mustache …

I'd rather stick my head up an elephant's cunt

You could sit in there all day drinking coffee and they never asked you to leave no matter how bad you looked. They just asked the bums not to bring their wine and drink it there. Places like that gave you hope when there wasn´t much hope.

The girls looked good from a distance, the sun shining through their dresses, their hair. But get up close and listen to their minds running out of their mouths, you felt like digging in under a hill and hiding out with a tommy-gun.

I didn’t particularly want money. I didn’t know what I wanted. Yes, I did. I wanted someplace to hide out, someplace where one didn’t have to do anything. The thought of being something didn’t only appall me, it sickened me. The thought of being a lawyer or a councilman or an engineer, anything like that, seemed impossible to me. To get married, to have children, to get trapped in the family structure. To go someplace to work every day and to return. It was impossible. To do things, simple things, to be part of family picnics, Christmas, the 4th of July, Labor Day, Mother’s Day … was a man born just to endure those things and then die? I would rather be a dishwasher, return alone to a tiny room and drink myself to sleep.

A whole god-damned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidate who reminded them most of themselves.

My father didn’t drive because he wanted to save gas. He needed the gas to drive to and from his invisible job.

It felt good to sit alone in a small space and smoke and drink. I had always been good company for myself.

Sunday, the worst god-damned day of them all.

There are no good wars or bad wars. The only thing bad about a war is to lose it. All wars have been fought for a so-called good Cause on both sides. But only the victor's Cause becomes history's Noble Cause. It's not a matter of who is right or who is wrong, it's a matter of who has the best generals and the better army!

Jim, did your father really blow his brains out because of your mother?” “Yeah. He was on the telephone. He told her he had a gun. He said, ‘If you don’t come back to me I’m going to kill myself. Will you come back to me?’ And my mother said, ‘No.’ There was a shot and that was that.” “What did your mother do?” “She hung up.

It made me feel good to write about the Baron. A man needed somebody. There wasn't anybody around, so you had to make up somebody, make him up to be like a man should be. It wasn't make- believe or cheating. The other way was make-believe and cheating: living your life without a man like him around.

Where had they learned to converse and to dance? I couldn't converse or dance. Everybody knew something I didn't know. The girls looked so good, the boys so handsome. I would be too terrified to even look at one of those girls, let alone be close to one. To look into her eyes or dance with her would be beyond me. And yet I know that what I saw wasn't as simple and good as it appeared. There was a price to be paid for it all, a general falsity, that could be easily believed, and could be the first step down a dead-end street.

All right, God, say that You are really there. You have put me in this fix. You want to test me. Suppose I test You? Suppose I say that You are not there? You've given me a supreme test with my parents and with these boils. I think that I have passed Your test. I am tougher than You. If You will come down here right now, I will spit into Your face, if You have a face. And do You shit? The priest never answered that question. He told us not to doubt. Doubt what? I think that You have been picking on me too much so I am asking You to come down here so I can put You to the test! I waited. Nothing. I waited for God. I waited and waited. I believe I slept.

The whole college scene was soft. They never told you what to expect out there in the real world. They just crammed you with theory and never told you how hard the pavements were. A college education could destroy an individual for life. Books could make you soft. When you put them down, and really went out there, then you needed to know what they never told you.

Gathered around me were the weak instead of the strong, the ugly instead of the beautiful, the losers instead of the winners. It looked like it was my destiny to travel in their company through life. That didn’t bother me so much as the fact that I seemed irresistible to these dull idiot fellows.

People always talked about the good clean smell of fresh sweat. They had to make excuses for it. They never talked about the good clean smell of fresh shit. There was nothing really as glorious as a good beer shit - I mean after drinking twenty or twenty-five beers the night before. The odor of a beer shit like that spread all around and stayed for a good hour-and-a-half. It made you realize that you were really alive.

He even got up once in English class and read an essay called ‘The Value of Friendship’ and while he was reading it he kept glancing at me. It was a stupid essay, soft and standard, but the class applauded when he finished, and I thought, well, that’s what people think and what can you do about it? I wrote a counter-essay called, ‘The Value of No Friendship At All.’ The teacher didn’t let me read it to the class. She gave me a D.

The life of the sane, average man was dull, worse than death. There seemed to be no possible alternative. Education also seemed to be a trap. The little education I had allowed myself had made me more suspicious. What were doctors, lawyers, scientists? They were just men who allowed themselves to be deprived of their freedom to think and act as individuals. I went back to my shack and drank ...