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
My writing is jagged and harsh, I want it to remain that way; I don't want it smoothed out.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Bukowski prefers his writing to be raw and unrefined, reflecting authenticity.
This quote by Charles Bukowski emphasizes the importance of authenticity in art and writing. He expresses a desire for his work to retain its inherent jaggedness, suggesting that a lack of polish allows deeper truths to emerge, and that the rough edges of one's expression can be more genuine and impactful than a smooth but artificial presentation.
Themes
WritingAuthenticityRawArtExpression
In practice
Example use cases
In a workshop on creative writing, one might quote Bukowski to encourage students to embrace their unique styles.
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
If you have a career like mine, which is so identified with Hollywood, with big studios and stars, you wonder if maybe you shouldn't go off and do what the world thinks of as more personal films with lesser-known people. But I think I've fooled everybody. I've made personal films all along. I just made them in another form.
Sydney PollackRead
The sheer ease with which we can produce a superficial image often leads to creative disaster.
Ansel AdamsRead
The ostensible subject of my photographs may be motion, but the subtext is time. A dancer's movements illustrate the passage of time, giving it a substance, materiality, and space. In my photographs, time is stopped, a split second becomes an eternity, and an ephemeral moment is solid as sculpture.
Lois GreenfieldRead
Every film should have its own world, a logic and feel to it that expands beyond the exact image that the audience is seeing.
Christopher NolanRead
If you shoot with a billion cameras, then there's no perspective. You want to use one shot at a time, so it's better to discover what that is before you shoot, rather than trying to make something in the cutting room, and then it just becomes generic.
Roger DeakinsRead
Faded the flower and all its budded charms,Faded the sight of beauty from my eyes,Faded the shape of beauty from my arms,Faded the voice, warmth, whiteness, paradise!Vanishd unseasonably
John KeatsRead