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
They laughed. Things were funny. They weren't afraid to care. There was no sense to life, to the structure of things.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the absurdity of life while highlighting the importance of laughter and caring connections among people.
In this quote, Charles Bukowski emphasizes the juxtaposition of humor and existential uncertainty. He suggests that despite the lack of inherent meaning in life and the chaotic nature of existence, finding joy in laughter and the willingness to care for one another are what make life worth living. It invites us to embrace the absurd and seek connections that provide solace amidst the confusion.
In practice
In a speech about embracing life's challenges, one might quote this to illustrate the importance of humor.
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.
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, canβt sit still, move, or even go decently insane.
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.
Our Lord humbled without humiliation His lofty station which yet could not be humbled, and condescends to His servants, with a condescension ineffable and incomprehensible. God being perfect becomes perfect man, and brings to perfection the newest of all new things (cf. Eccles 1:10), the only new thing under the sun, through which the boundless might of God is manifested. For what greater thing is there than that God should become man?
I think computer viruses should count as life ... I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image.
One who has never known the turbulence of life, in whom the petals of the mysterious flower within have never opened; such a one may seem happy, may seem a saint, his single track mind may impress the multitude with its power - but he is ill equipped for life's true adventure into the infinite.
Things happen, people change,' is what Amanda said. For her that covered it. You wanted an explanation, and ending that would assign blame and dish up justice. You considered violence and you considered reconciliation . But what you are left with is a premonition of the way your life will fade behind you, like a book you have read too quickly, leaving a dwindling trail of images and emotions, until all you can remember is a name.
Free will is "corrupted nature's deformed darling, the Pallas or beloved self-conception of darkened minds"
Most gods throw dice, but Fate plays chess, and you don't find out til too late that he's been playing with two queens all along.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.