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
An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Intellectuals often complicate simple ideas, while artists simplify complex concepts.
This quote by Charles Bukowski highlights the contrast between the ways intellectuals and artists communicate. Intellectuals tend to use complicated language and convoluted explanations to express simple ideas, making them difficult to grasp, while artists have the ability to distill complex thoughts into accessible forms that resonate deeply with people, illustrating the power of creativity in conveying meaning.
Themes
IntellectualArtistSimplicityComplexityCommunication
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about creativity, one could use this quote to illustrate the role of artists in making profound ideas accessible.
More from Charles Bukowski
All quotes →when 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, can’t 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 don’t 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
We talk so abstractly about poetry because all of us are usually bad poets.
Friedrich NietzscheRead
When she listened to songs that she loved on the radio, something stirred inside her. A liquid ache spread under her skin, and she walked out of the world like a witch.
Arundhati RoyRead
Strength may wield the ponderous spade, May turn the clod, and wheel the compost home; But elegance, chief grace the garden shows, And most attractive, is the fair result Of thought, the creature of a polished mind.
William CowperRead
[A writer is] a priest of eternal imagination, transmuting the daily bread of experience into the radiant body of everliving life.
James JoyceRead
I would rather be on the set than doing anything.
Orson WellesRead
If the work is poor, the public taste will soon do it justice. And the author, reaping neither glory nor fortune, will learn by hard experience how to correct his mistakes.
Jacques-Louis DavidRead