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'm an ass, I should say so. If I don't, somebody else will. If I say it first, that disarms them.
Interpretation
Acknowledging one's flaws can take away the power from others to criticize you first.
This quote suggests that self-awareness and humility are powerful tools in dealing with criticism. By admitting our own shortcomings before others can point them out, we disarm potential criticism and maintain control over our self-image, which can lead to a more authentic and genuine interaction with others.
In practice
In a speech about personal growth, one might quote this to emphasize the importance of self-acknowledgment.
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.
Condense some daily experience into a glowing symbol and an audience is electrified.
Don't be insecure, if your heart is pure
Do not look at the faults of what others have done or not done; observe what you yourself have done or not done.
Zeal without knowledge is fire without light.
He whose genius appears deepest and truest excels his fellows in nothing save the knack of expression; he throws out occasionally a lucky hint at truths of which every human soul is profoundly though unutterably conscious.
Know, thou, that the lines that live are turned out of a furrowed brow.
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