“I can’t think of any greater happiness than to be with you all the time, without interruption, endlessly, even though I feel that here in this world there’s no undisturbed place for our love, neither in the village nor anywhere else; and I dream of a grave, deep and narrow, where we could clasp each other in our arms as with clamps, and I would hide my face in you and you would hide your face in me, and nobody would ever see us any more.”
― Franz Kafka, Franz Kafka's The Castle
― Franz Kafka, Franz Kafka's The Castle
Charles Bukowski
(August 16, 1920 - March 9, 1994)
Bukowski’s short stories and novels are unsparingly realistic and usually comic. They often observe the thoughts and actions of Bukowski’s alter ego Henry Chinaski, a hard-drinking unskilled worker, a lover of classical music, and a gambler on the horses.
(August 16, 1920 - March 9, 1994)
Bukowski’s short stories and novels are unsparingly realistic and usually comic. They often observe the thoughts and actions of Bukowski’s alter ego Henry Chinaski, a hard-drinking unskilled worker, a lover of classical music, and a gambler on the horses.
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“Do you hate people?”
“I don't hate them...I just feel better when they're not around.”
― Barfly
“I don't hate them...I just feel better when they're not around.”
― Barfly
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“For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.”
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“Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I'm not going to make it, but you laugh inside — remembering all the times you've felt that way.”
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“We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.”
“You have to die a few times before you can really live.”
― The People Look Like Flowers at Last
― The People Look Like Flowers at Last
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“The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.”
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“If you're losing your soul and you know it, then you've still got a soul left to lose”
“I loved you like a man loves a woman he never touches, only writes to, keeps little photographs of.”
― Love Is a Dog from Hell
― Love Is a Dog from Hell
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“being alone never felt right. sometimes it felt good, but it never felt right.”
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“I felt like crying but nothing came out. it was just a sort of sad sickness, sick sad, when you can't feel any worse. I think you know it. I think everybody knows it now and then. but I think I have known it pretty often, too often.”
— Tales of Ordinary Madness
— Tales of Ordinary Madness
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“the free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it - basically because you feel good, very good, when you are near or with them.”
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“she was consumed by 3 simple things:
drink, despair, loneliness; and 2 more:
youth and beauty”
— The People Look Like Flowers at Last
drink, despair, loneliness; and 2 more:
youth and beauty”
— The People Look Like Flowers at Last
“I was sentimental about many things: a woman’s shoes under the bed; one hairpin left behind on the dresser; the way they said, 'I’m going to pee.' hair ribbons; walking down the boulevard with them at 1:30 in the afternoon, just two people walking together; the long nights of drinking and smoking; talking; the arguments; thinking of suicide; eating together and feeling good; the jokes; the laughter out of nowhere; feeling miracles in the air; being in a parked car together; comparing past loves at 3am; being told you snore; hearing her snore; mothers, daughters, sons, cats, dogs; sometimes death and sometimes divorce; but always carring on, always seeing it through; reading a newspaper alone in a sandwich joint and feeling nausea because she’s now married to a dentist with an I.Q. of 95; racetracks, parks, park picnics; even jails; her dull friends; your dull friends; your drinking, her dancing; your flirting, her flirting; her pills, your fucking on the side and her doing the same; sleeping together”
— Women
— Women
“I was a man who thrived on solitude; without it I was like another man without food or water. Each day without solitude weakened me. I took no pride in my solitude; but I was dependent on it. The darkness of the
room was like sunlight to me.”
— Factotum
room was like sunlight to me.”
— Factotum
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