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”
“Humans find meaningfulness where none exists because we want to create a sense of order in this chaotic universe. It's called apophenia. (And it's also the reason people believe in God.)”
“I smelled the stink that only a street whore has after a long, busy night.”
“He could remember a time when the loneliness of death had terrified him, when the idea of it was insupportable. He used to feel that if his wife could but lie in the same coffin with him, his body would not be so insensible that the nearness of hers would not give it comfort. But now he thought of eternal solitude with gratefulness; as a release from every obligation, from every form of effort. It was the Truth. One”
“Lord can restore a covenant with Israel and yet continue”
“But, every once in a while, even the most normal of people act in ways that surprise themselves, doing things they might never have imagined themselves doing because they're excited, or they're obsessed, or they're in love.”
BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.