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
The writer has no responsibility other than to jack off in bed alone and write a good page.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the solitary nature of writing and the importance of personal expression over external obligations.
Charles Bukowski expresses the idea that a writer's primary obligation is to focus on their craft and create compelling work without being burdened by societal expectations or responsibilities. The imagery of being alone in bed suggests that writing is a personal and often private endeavor, highlighting the artist's need for solitude to cultivate their creativity.
Themes
WritingSolitudeCreativityArtistic ExpressionBukowski
In practice
Example use cases
In a writer's workshop to inspire students about the importance of personal creativity.
More from Charles Bukowski
All quotes βwhen 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
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.
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 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.
Charles BukowskiRead
Similar quotes
Literary studies were no more than a series of autopsies performed by heartless technicians. Worse than autopsies: biopsies. Vivisection. Even movies, which I love more than anything, more than life itself, they even do it with movies these days.
Stephen FryRead
You don't have to make something in order to retain your identity as an artist or a writer or a creative person. A lot of people think they have to be producing in order to maintain that identity.
Lucy DacusRead
Being in ballet class, being on the stage, being surrounded by my peers at American Ballet Theater every day, keeps me so humble and grounded. Being in ballet class, I feel, is like this meditation for me every morning.
Misty CopelandRead
You must in all Airs follow the strength, spirit, and disposition of the horse, and do nothing against nature; for art is but to set nature in order, and nothing else.
William CavendishRead
Storytellers all, we humans might run out of time even as we triumph over the problem of running out of space. But we will never run out of stories.
Tom JunodRead
You live in my heart where no one sees you but I do. That vision becomes this art.
RumiRead