A bunch of quotes

[GDPR 4124]

Being the worst researcher in the history of mankind, I once again come here with some quotes attributed to Bukowski without a proper source, and once again I beg you guys for help. Here we go:

1.

“There still might be a place
for us
somewhere.”

2.

“We don’t even ask for happiness, just a little less pain.”

3.

"you were not only the essence of that
moment
but of all my moments up to then

yet there was nothing
I could tell you."

4.

"This incompleteness is all we have."

 

[Black Swan]

1. In the poem
heads without faces,
seen in all the places
Sifting through the Madness... pg 330

3. In the poem
mermaid
Play the Piano... pg 112

 

[GDPR 4124]

Thanks a lot. Does anybody else know where 2. and 4. comes from?

 

[gbsupbowl]

Where did you find these quotes?

 

[GDPR 4124]

I found the quotes in literary blogs/tumblrs where they usually present the source, but not in these cases.

 

[mjp]

“We don’t even ask for happiness, just a little less pain.”

That's from a letter in Reach for the Sun
[To William Packard] mid-July, 1985

"This incompleteness is all we have."

Last Night of the Earth Poems
a suborder of naked buds

 

[GDPR 4124]

Thanks a lot. Since I became a member here and discovered how much on the Internet that's credited to Bukowski without a source, I've become unhealthily suspicious. I'm glad I have you guys to rely on.

 

[stourleyk]

Thanks a lot. Does anybody else know where 2. and 4. comes from?

#2 is reputed to be from a Letter to William Packard, July 1985. I don’t have Bukowski’s collected letters so I can’t verify. And people don’t have very high standards re attribution. Certainly “Well, someone else thinks he said it so he must have said it” is a higher standard than “It sounds like him so have said it.” But not much.

 

[zobraks]

I don’t have Bukowski’s collected letters so I can’t verify.

I have, and I can.
It's in Reach for the Sun, page 74.

Sex, love, duty, God, family are not to be bargained with against happiness, and we don’t even ask happiness, just a little less pain.

The fourth quote is from a poem A Suborder of Naked Buds, published in The Last Night of the Earth Poems.
For what it's worth, that's the only occasion of Bukowski using the word "incompleteness" in all his published works.

Edit: mjp already solved these two mysteries twelve years ago.