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
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote explores the profound and often chaotic experience of agony, emphasizing its complexity and the fear it instills.
Charles Bukowski's quote delves into the intense and often overwhelming nature of real agony. He describes it as a state that is difficult to articulate and comprehend while one is in its grasp. It evokes a sense of fear and restlessness that can render a person immobilized, highlighting the deep psychological turmoil that accompanies such pain. The vivid imagery conveys that agony is not just a physical sensation but a profound emotional and mental experience that can drive one to the brink of insanity.
Themes
AgonyPainFearEmotionalUnderstandingChaos
In practice
Example use cases
In a talk about mental health, one might quote Bukowski to emphasize the complexities of experiencing deep emotional pain.
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
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
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.
Charles BukowskiRead
Similar quotes
Say not, 'I have found the truth,' but rather, 'I have found a truth.' Say not, ' I have found the path of the soul.' Say rather, 'I have met the soul walking upon my path.' For the soul walks upon all paths. The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed. The soul unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals.
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The Byronic hero, incapable of love, or capable only of an impossible love, suffers endlessly. He is solitary, languid, his condition exhausts him. If he wants to feel alive, it must be in the terrible exaltation of a brief and destructive action.
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Pope Benedict XviRead
The natural purity of our mind is of no use to us if we are not aware of it, _x000D_ _x000D_ and if we do not integrate it with our moving mind. _x000D_ _x000D_ If we realize our innate purity, but only integrate with it from time to time, we are not totally awakened._x000D_ _x000D_ Being in total integration all the time is final realization
Tenzin Wangyal RinpocheRead