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.
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects the struggle of being polite while feeling disconnected from others, highlighting the emotional toll of superficial interactions.
In this quote, Charles Bukowski expresses a deep frustration with his interactions with others, revealing a pattern where he feigns engagement to avoid conflict or hurt feelings. This 'cut-off period' signifies a defense mechanism where he emotionally detaches himself from conversations, leading to a sense of alienation and dissatisfaction, particularly when his kindness is met with ignorance from those around him. Bukowski critiques not only his own behavior but also the nature of human interactions that often lack depth and understanding.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about mental health, this quote can illustrate how one may feel pressured to conform in social settings.
More from Charles Bukowski
All quotes →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, can’t sit still, move, or even go decently insane.
He asked, "what makes a man a writer?" "well," I said, "it's simple, it's either you get it down on paper or you jump off a bridge. writers are desperate people and when they stop being desperate they stop being writers." "are you desperate?" "I don't know.
Similar quotes
What excites and interests the looker-on at life, what the romances and the statues celebrate, and the grim civic monuments remind us of, is the everlasting battle of the powers of light with those of darkness; with heroism reduced to its bare chance, yet ever and anon snatching victory from the jaws of death.
The founding of our Nation was more than a political event; it was an act of faith, a promise to Americans and to the entire world. The Declaration of Independence declared that people can govern themselves, that they can live in freedom with equal rights, that they can respect the rights of others.
The gods conceal from men the happiness of death, that they may endure life.
It is unfortunately none too well understood that, just as the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own.
The sea, the great unifier, is man's only hope. Now, as never before, the old phrase has a literal meaning: we are all in the same boat.
Doomed Lord's Passing. For the mind of man alone is free to explore the lofty vastness of the cosmic infinite, to transcend ordinary consciousness, to roam the secret corridors of the brain where past and future melt into one...And universe and individual are linked, the one mirrored in the other, and each contains the other.