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
Love is a horse with a broken leg trying to stand while 45,000 people watch.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote illustrates the struggle and vulnerability inherent in love when faced with external judgment.
Charles Bukowski's metaphor compares love to a horse with a broken leg, symbolizing the pain and difficulty that love can endure. The presence of 45,000 spectators emphasizes the pressure and scrutiny that relationships often face from the outside world, suggesting that even when love feels fragile, it strives to stand and persist amidst challenges and judgment.
Themes
LoveStruggleVulnerabilityJudgmentPain
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the complexities of relationships, this quote can illustrate the difficulty of love under scrutiny.
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
Love is our response to our highest values.
Ayn RandRead
It's total bullshit," he said. "The whole thing. Eighty percent survival rate and he's in the twenty percent? Bullshit. He was such a bright kid. It's bullshit. I hate it. But it was sure a privilege to love him, huh?
John GreenRead
I have two luxuries to brood over in my walks, your loveliness and the hour of my death. O that I could have possession of them both in the same minute.
John KeatsRead
Affection would not be affection if it was loudly and frequently expressed; to produce it in public is like getting your household furniture out for a move. It did very well in its place, but it looks shabby or tawdry or grotesque in the sunshine.
C. S. LewisRead
Love is the joy of the good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the gods; desired by those who have no part in him, and precious to those who have the better part in him.
PlatoRead
My grandfather died when I was 12, but I remember the sorrow of my mother. Even now, she's an old lady, but when she speaks about her father, she looks young. A love like that is undefeated, you know?
Claire DenisRead