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
There's nothing to mourn about death any more than there is to mourn about the growing of a flower. What is terrible is not death but the lives people live or don't live up until their death.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Death should not be mourned and is a natural part of life, while the quality of life before death is what truly matters.
In this quote, Charles Bukowski suggests that death is a natural transition and should not be regarded with sorrow, just as one would not mourn the blossoming of a flower. Instead, he emphasizes that the true tragedy lies in how people choose to live their lives, whether they embrace their existence or let it pass them by without meaning or fulfillment.
Themes
DeathLifeMeaningLivingFlower
In practice
Example use cases
A speaker at a funeral might use this quote to encourage reflection on the deceased person's life rather than their death.
More from Charles Bukowski
All quotes →when I am feeling low all i have to do is watch my cats and my courage returns
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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