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
The Difference Between Art and Life is that Art is More Bearable
Interpretation
Art allows us to endure life's challenges by providing a unique lens through which to experience and express reality.
This quote suggests that while life can be harsh and difficult to endure, art serves as a means to navigate and soften these experiences. Bukowski implies that art encapsulates the complexity of existence, making it more manageable and bearable, as it allows individuals to explore, understand, and ultimately cope with the various facets of life through creativity and expression.
In practice
In a discussion about coping mechanisms, one might use this quote to highlight the therapeutic nature of art.
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.
when I am feeling low all i have to do is watch my cats and my courage returns
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.
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.
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.
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.
What makes literature interesting is that it does not survive its translation. The characters in a novel are made out of the sentences. That's what their substance is.
Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it.
I've always believed that there's an amazing number of things you can do through a rock'n'roll song and that you can do serious writing in a rock song if you can somehow do it without losing the beat.
It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them.
The purpose of theatre is... making an event in which a group of fragments are sudde nly brought together... in a community which, by the natural laws that make every community, gradually breaks up... At certain moments this fragmented world comes together and for a certain time it can rediscover the marvel of organic life ... The marvel of being one.
Never apologize for your cooking.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.