Charles Bukowski · 240 pages
Rating: (7.6K votes)
“Are there good governments and bad governments? No, there are only bad governments and worse governments.”
“Even the stove and the refrigerator looked human, I mean good human - they seemed to have arms and voices and they said, hang around, kid, it's good here, it can be very good here.”
“إننا نعيش كل حياتنا كالحمقى ثم نموت في نهاية المطاف”
“She had chosen me and it was as simple as that.”
“I got my hands under the breasts, lifted them. Tons of meat. Meat without mouth or eye. MEAT MEAT MEAT. i slammed it into my mouth and flew into heaven.”
“الفرق بين الديموقراطية والديكتاتورية أننا في الديموقرطية ننتخب أولاً ثم نتلقى الأوامر، أما في الديكتاتورية فلا حاجة إلى تضييع الوقت في الإنتخابات ص 270”
“هل توجد حكومات جيدة وحكومات سيئة؟ لا، هناك حكومات سيئة فقط وحكومات أشد سوءًا ص 273”
“I went into the crapper and took myself a beautiful beershit. Then I went to bed, jacked off, and slept.”
“Two bulls fighting for the cow. And a bony one at that. But in America the loser oftentimes got the cow. Mother instinct? Better wallet? Longer dick? God knows what.…”
“Oh, you’ve got a sweet voice, baby, such a sad sad sweet voice, I’d like to fuck you, I thought.”
“I bought two tall six-packs of Schlitz and went back to my place and drank down the requiem.”
“But I gave the girl my address and phone number, thinking we might make it on the springs. (Harriet, you never arrived.)”
“But it’s all the little people, Buk, the twenty-five-buck-a-week guys who gave up everything to keep the thing going. The guys with cardboard in their shoes. The guys who slept on the floor.”
“العمر ليس جريمة، الجريمة أن غالبية البشر يهرمون على نحو سيء ص 286”
“They kept chirping and flipping and fingering their mental assholes.”
“It was con; my mind was blank; I only wanted a halfpint of Grandad and six or seven tall cool beers . . .”
“At lunchtime (10:24 p.m.) I went out and bought the L.A. Times.”
“الجمال لا شيء، الجمال لا يدوم، لا تعلم كم أنت محظوظ لأنك قبيح، لأن الناس لو أحبوك فأنت تعلم أنهم يحبوك لشيء آخر ص 11”
“البشر الصغار هم دائماً كبش الفداء، هذا هو التاريخ ص 196”
“راهنوا فقط عندما تسمحون لأنفسكم بالخسارة. أعني من دون أن تجدوا أنفسكم تنامون على مقعد في حديقة أو فاتتكم 3 أو 4 وجبات. الأهم، هو أن تدفعوا إيجار الشقة أولاً. تجنبوا الضغوط ص 159”
“So I drank every night after work, alone, up at my place and I had enough left for a day at the track on Saturday, and life was simple and without too much pain. Maybe without too much reason, but getting away from pain was reasonable enough.”
“...there comes a time in each man's life when he must choose to stand or run. I choose to stand.”
“وحدهم الفقراء من يفهمون معنى الحياة، أما الأغنياء والامنون يمكنهم أن يخمنوا فقط ص 175”
“يتطلب الأمر جرأة لتحاول مرة أخرى ص 195”
“لم يكن الكلب يكترث كم أملك أو لا أملك من المال. كلب حقيقي ص 140”
“هذا ما يفكر فيه الجميع: أنا لا انتمي إلى هنا. هذا ما يقوله كل فردٍ منهم بينه وبين نفسه.
هم محقون، وماذا بعد ؟ ص 141”
“أنا عبقري ولكن لا أحد يعرف ذلك سواي ص 147”
“الجشع البشري لا يعرف حدوداً ويواصل تغذية نفسه ص 156”
“إذا أردتم أن تعرفوا أي الطرق هي الأنسب، اختاروا الطريقة المعاكسة لخيار الجمهور ص 156”
“because sometimes, to find home, you must first go farther afield.”
“Moments later, the cowbells clattered, and Rachel Anderson, the creative-writing teacher from the community college, walked in. Rachel, wearing a floor-skimming lavender skirt, her long, blond hair pulled into a neat French braid, scanned the diner. Settling her sunglasses on the top of her head, she went to the counter and politely addressed the group.”
“It will take time to heal. Just like all the others.”
“I wanted very much to learn to draw, for a reason that I kept to myself: I wanted to convey an emotion I have about the beauty of the world. It's difficult to describe because it's an emotion. It's analogous to the feeling one has in religion that has to do with a god that controls everything in the whole universe: there's a generality aspect that you feel when you think about how things that appear so different and behave so differently are all run "behind the scenes" by the same organization, the same physical laws. It's an appreciation of the mathematical beauty of nature, of how she works inside; a realization that the phenomena we see result from the complexity of the inner workings between atoms; a feeling of how dramatic and wonderful it is. It's a feeling of awe — of scientific awe — which I felt could be communicated through a drawing to someone who had also had this emotion. It could remind him, for a moment, of this feeling about the glories of the universe.”
“I was trying to foment a little dissension.' He paused. 'No, that's too flippant. How about trying to make the system less warlike—injecting a little love?' He snorted. 'Through violence, of course, like all religious reformers.”
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