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
I give you soul. I give you wisdom and light and music and a bit of laughter. Also, I am the world's greatest horseplayer.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of creativity and joy in life.
In this quote, Charles Bukowski expresses his dedication to sharing profound elements of life—such as soul, wisdom, and joy—through art and music. He whimsically contrasts this with his claim to being the 'world's greatest horseplayer,' highlighting the blend of serious passion and playful confidence that characterizes his view of existence.
In practice
During a creative writing workshop to inspire students.
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, can’t 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 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.
The small wad of burning paper drew down to a wisp of flame and then died out leaving a faint pattern for just a moment in the incandescence like the shape of a flower, a molten rose. Then all was dark again.
There's just certain styles of playing that you do play in your own way. Maybe it's in the way your fingers bend, for all I know. And so whenever you pick up the guitar it's not so much the sound of the instrument itself, it's like the ting that you add onto it-the attitude.
Stories are the most important thing in the world. Without stories, we wouldn't be human beings at all.
Whenever I think of the high salaries we are paid as film actors, I think it is for the travel, the time away, and any trouble you get into through being well known. It's not for the acting, that's for sure.
Nothing contributes to the entertainment of the reader more, than the change of times and the vicissitudes of fortune.
That is the mystery about writing: it comes out of afflictions, out of the gouged times, when the heart is cut open.
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