Charles Bukowski · 320 pages
Rating: (11K votes)
“Lighting new cigarettes,
pouring more
drinks.
It has been a beautiful
fight.
Still
is.”
“Now something so sad has hold of us that the breath leaves and we can't even cry.”
“it seemed to me that I had never met
another person on earth
as discouraging to my happiness
as my father.
and it appeared that I had
the same effect upon
him.”
“the courage it took to get out of bed each
morning
to face the same things
over and over
was
enormous.”
“I don't remember going to bed, but in the morning, there I was.”
“I knew it would be you”
“Beasts bounding through time.
Van Gogh writing his brother for paints
Hemingway testing his shotgun
Celine going broke as a doctor of medicine
the impossibility of being human
Villon expelled from Paris for being a thief
Faulkner drunk in the gutters of his town
the impossibility of being human
Burroughs killing his wife with a gun
Mailer stabbing his
the impossibility of being human
Maupassant going mad in a rowboat
Dostoevsky lined up against a wall to be shot
Crane off the back of a boat into the propeller
the impossibility
Sylvia with her head in the oven like a baked potato
Harry Crosby leaping into that Black Sun
Lorca murdered in the road by the Spanish troops
the impossibility
Artaud sitting on a madhouse bench
Chatterton drinking rat poison
Shakespeare a plagiarist
Beethoven with a horn stuck into his head against deafness
the impossibility the impossibility
Nietzsche gone totally mad
the impossibility of being human
all too human
this breathing
in and out
out and in
these punks
these cowards
these champions
these mad dogs of glory
moving this little bit of light toward
us
impossibly”
“it doesn't matter if Prince Charles falls off his horse
or that the hummingbird is so seldom
seen
or that we are too senseless to go
insane.
coffee. give us more of that NOTHING
coffee.”
“I was their bar freak, they needed me
to make themselves feel
better.
just like, at times, I needed that
graveyard.”
“No Help of that
There is a place in the heart that will never be filled a space. And even during the best moments and the greatest times we will know it We will know it more that ever. There is a place in the heart that will never be filled and we will wait and wait in that place.”
“and even the trees we walked
under
seemed
less than
trees
and more like everything
else.”
“lay down. lay down like an animal and wait.”
“the area dividing the brain and the soul
is affected in many ways by
experience –
some lose all mind and become soul:
insane.
some lose all soul and become mind:
intellectual.
some lose both and become:
accepted.”
“sometimes when everything seems at
its worst
when all conspires
and gnaws
and the hours, days, weeks
years
seem wasted –
stretched there upon my bed
in the dark
looking upward at the ceiling
i get what many will consider an
obnoxious thought:
it’s still nice to be
Bukowski.”
“she slammed the door and
was gone.
I looked at the closed door
and at the doorknob
and strangely
I didn't feel
alone.”
“It doesn't really make sense. Guess it's not supposed to.”
“Never would I take what I’d been given for granted. I’d never look at her through indifferent eyes, listen to her fears and worries with distant ears, or touch her with impassive hands. Elizabeth was a gift and Lizzie was my treasure. I would adore my family until the day I died.”
“Guys are totally stupid when it comes to unrequited love. We females pine away and keep our thighs closed for the most part when we love someone we can’t have. Guys swing their shit around at anything that has a hole, trying to forget the one they want.”
“[A]ll that mystical jabber about expecting the unexpected is just so much toffee. Expect the unexpected, Edie was told by a sour veteran sergeant in Burma, and the expected will walk up to you and blow your expectations out through the back of your head. Expect the expected, just don’t forget the rest.”
“No lea libros que le digan que el mundo está llegando a su fin, ni lea escritos de filósofos escandalizadores y pesimistas que dicen que vamos hacia el demonio. El mundo no va hacia el demonio; está yendo a Dios. Es una maravillosa transformación.”
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