I can never drive my car over a bridge without thinking of suicide. I can never look at a lake or an ocean without thinking of suicide.
Charles BukowskiRead
I carry death in my left pocket. Sometimes I take it out and talk to it: "Hello, baby, how you doing? When you coming for me? I'll be ready.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects an acceptance of mortality and the inevitability of death.
Charles Bukowski's quote reveals a profound acknowledgment of death as an ever-present reality in life. By personifying death and engaging with it in a casual, conversational manner, Bukowski illustrates a unique relationship with his own mortality, emphasizing both the fear and the acceptance that come with it. This approach invites readers to confront their own feelings about death and the fleeting nature of existence.
Themes
DeathMortalityExistenceAcceptanceLife
In practice
Example use cases
In a poetry reading discussing themes of mortality and acceptance, this quote can be used to illustrate the poet's unique perspective.
More from Charles Bukowski
All quotes βwhen I am feeling low all i have to do is watch my cats and my courage returns
Charles BukowskiRead
The masses are always wrong...Wisdom is doing everything the crowd does not do. All you do is reverse the totality of their learning and you have the heaven they're looking for.
Charles BukowskiRead
I'm going to open another vottle. not a vottle, but a bottle. you open it and I'll drink it. and you try to write as much as I did without falling off of your chair.
Charles BukowskiRead
To experience real agony is something hard to write about, impossible to understand while it grips you; you're frightened out of your wits, canβt sit still, move, or even go decently insane.
Charles BukowskiRead
I lapsed into my pathetic cut-off period. Often with humans, both good and bad, my senses simply shut off, they get tired, I give up. I am polite. I nod. I pretend to understand because I donβt want anybody to be hurt. That is the one weakness that has lead me into the most trouble. Trying to be kind to others I often get my soul shredded into a kind of spiritual pasta. No matter. My brain shuts off. I listen. I respond. And they are too dumb to know that I am not there.
Charles BukowskiRead
Similar quotes
World views are social constructions and they channel the search for facts. But facts are found and knowledge progresses, however fitfully.
Stephen Jay GouldRead
It is the quality of patriotism to be jealous and watchful, to observe all secret machinations, and to see publick dangers at a distance. The true lover of his country is ready to communicate his fears, and to sound the alarm, whenever he perceives the approach of mischief. But he sounds no alarm, when there is no enemy; he never terrifies his countrymen till he is terrified himself. The patriotism, therefore, may be justly doubted of him, who professes to be disturbed by incredibilities.
Samuel JohnsonRead
Great stories are still just great yarns. News remains the best human drama ever. Technology is not changing the story; it is just changing the way in which we deliver it.
Andrew Ross SorkinRead
An organizer working in and for an open society is in an ideological dilemma to begin with, he does not have a fixed truth - truth to him is relative and changing; everything to him is relative and changing.... To the extent that he is free from the shackles of dogma, he can respond to the realities of the widely different situations.
Saul AlinskyRead
All that you think is rain is not. Behind the veil angels sometimes weep.
RumiRead
It is really hard to be lonely very long in a world of words. Even if you don't have friends somewhere, you still have language, and it will find you and wrap its little syllables around you and suddenly there will be a story to live in.
Naomi Shihab NyeRead