Charles Bukowski Quotes on Horse Racing

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Charles Bukowski said that he first went to a horse track after his girlfriend suggest it as a substitute for drinking, when his doctor told him he couldn’t drink any longer following a hospitalization.

He thought the idea of betting on horses sounded ridiculous, but came to love it. Then he returned to the drinking, and as he said, had both drinking and horse racing to occupy his time.

Charles Bukowski Horse Racing Quotes

“I have wasted a lifetime at the racetrack
and to this moment, I still go every day.

“I don’t know any other place to go.
the toteboard flashes and I move in.”

~ Charles Bukowski, “The Horse Players”

“the racetrack is just another JOB, finally, and a hard one too. when I sense this and I am at my best, I simply leave the track; when I sense this and I am not at my best I go on making bad bets. another thing that one should realize is that it is HARD to win at anything; losing is easy. it’s grand to be The Great American Loser – anybody can do it; almost everybody does.”

~ Charles Bukowki, Tales of Ordinary Madness

“With me, the racetrack tells me quickly where I am weak and where I am strong, and it tells me how I feel that day and it tells me how much we keep changing, changing ALL the time, and how little we know of this.”

~ Charles Bukowki, Tales of Ordinary Madness

“a man who can beat the horses can do almost anything he makes up his mind to do. he doesn’t belong at the racetrack. he should be on the Left Bank with his mother easel or in the East Village writing an avant-garde symphony. or making some woman happy. or living in a cave in the hills.”

~ Charles Bukowki, Tales of Ordinary Madness

“one day at a racetrack can teach you more than four years at any university. if I ever taught a class in creative writing, one of my prerequisites would be that each student must attend a racetrack once a week and place at least a 2 dollar win wager on each race. no show betting. people who bet to show REALLY want to stay at home but don’t know how.”

~ Charles Bukowki, Tales of Ordinary Madness

~ Charles Bukowski, “a 340 dollar horse and a hundred dollar whore”

“but I’ve got an old saying (I make up old sayings as I walk around in rags) that knowledge without follow-through is worse than no knowledge at all. because if you’re guessing and it doesn’t work you can just say, shit, the gods are against me. but if you know and don’t do, you’ve got attics and dark halls in your mind to walk up and down in and wonder about.”

~ Charles Bukowski, Notes of a Dirty Old Man

“the reason the average person is at the track is that they are driven screwy by the turn of the bolt, the foreman’s insane face, the landlord’s hand, the lover’s dead sex; taxation, cancer, the blues; clothes that fall apart on a 3rd wearing, water that tastes like piss, doctors that run assembly-line and indecent offices, hospitals without heart, politicians with skulls filled with pus.”

~ Charles Bukowski, Notes of a Dirty Old Man

“all I know is that I believe in the sound of music and the running of a horse. all else is squabble.”

~ Charles Bukowski, Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook

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