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
That moment - to this ... may be years in the way they measure, but it's only one sentence back in my mind - there are so many days when living stops and pulls up and sits and waits like a train on the rails. I pass the hotel at 8 and at 5; there are cats in the alleys and bottles and bums, and I look up at the window and think, I no longer know where you are, and I walk on and wonder where the living goes when it stops.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the nature of time and existence, expressing feelings of loss and disconnection from life.
In this quote, Charles Bukowski contemplates the moments in life that seem to stretch on for years, yet remain vividly present in his memory. He observes the world around him, filled with mundane details like passing a hotel or seeing stray cats, while grappling with a deep sense of uncertainty about where life goes during times of stagnation. This introspection reveals a longing for connection and an acknowledgment of the transient nature of existence.
Themes
TimeExistenceLossReflectionStagnationConnection
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a speech about the importance of seizing the moment and not becoming too caught up in routine.
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
The most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking.
Martin HeideggerRead
Classic economic theory, based as it is on an inadequate theory of human motivation, could be revolutionized by accepting the reality of higher human needs, including the impulse to self actualization and the love for the highest values.
Abraham MaslowRead
Hunger is not caused by a scarcity of food but a scarcity of democracy.
Frances Moore LappRead
Politics and the economy are not things that exist, or illusions, or ideologies. They are things that do not exist and yet which are inscribed in reality and fall under a regime of truth dividing the true and the false.
Michel FoucaultRead
We spend our lives on the run: we get up by the clock, eat and sleep by the clock, get up again, go to work - and then we retire. And what do they give us? A bloody clock.
Dave AllenRead
My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that, and I intend to end up there.
RumiRead