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
If I hadn't been a drunkard, I probably would have committed suicide long ago.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the struggle with addiction and the acknowledgment of its role in preserving life.
In this poignant quote, Charles Bukowski reveals the duality of his experience with alcoholism. He suggests that his excessive drinking, often seen as a detriment, may have actually served as a coping mechanism that prevented him from facing the darker thoughts and impulses that could have led him to take his own life. This highlights the complexities of human behavior and the intricate relationship between self-destruction and survival.
In practice
During a mental health awareness campaign, this quote can be used to illustrate the importance of seeking help.
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.
Black Consciousness is an attitude of the mind and a way of life, the most positive call to emanate from the black world for a long time. Its essence is the realisation by the black man of the need to rally together with his brothers around the cause of their oppression - the blackness of their skin - and to operate as a group to rid themselves of the shackles that bind them to perpetual servitude.
Become so wrapped up in something that you forget to be afraid.
I will never ally with Islamophobes and racists. But in the choice between 'community' and Muslim women, I will always choose my sisters.
I can never acknowledge the right of slavery. I will bow down to no deity however worshipped by professing Christians - however dignified by the name of the Goddess of Liberty, whose footstool is the crushed necks of the groaning millions, and who rejoices in the resoundings of the tyrant's lash, and the cries of his tortured victims.
I don't think that every single case of sexual harassment has to result in someone being fired; the consequences should vary. But we need a shift in culture so that every single instance of sexual harassment is investigated and dealt with. That's just basic common sense.
Let no one ever shy away from the claim that Jews have power, that Jews have influence. We have learned the terrible lesson of history; that unless we have influence and power, disproportionate to our small numbers - immoral results will occur. We need power. And we must continue to use our power. Power which we earned, power which no one gave us on a silver platter, power which we worked hard for - use that power in the interests of justice.
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