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
Thanksgiving. It proved you had survived another year with its wars, inflation, unemployment, smog, presidents. It was a grand neurotic gathering of clans: loud drunks, grandmothers, sisters, aunts, screaming children, would-be suicides. And don't forget indigestion. I wasn't different from anyone else: There sat the 18-pound bird on my sink, dead, plucked, totally disemboweled. Iris would roast it for me.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Thanksgiving is a complex time that reflects survival amidst chaos and family dynamics.
In this quote, Charles Bukowski encapsulates the essence of Thanksgiving as not just a celebration, but a reflection of enduring life's challenges—wars, inflation, and personal struggles—while surrounded by the chaotic yet familiar gatherings of family. He depicts a vivid image of the holiday, filled with both humor and melancholy, portraying it as a neurotic mix of people and experiences that ultimately emphasizes the complexities of family relationships during such a time.
Themes
ThanksgivingFamilyChaosSurvivalGathering
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used during a Thanksgiving dinner to highlight the humorous yet true nature of family gatherings.
More from Charles Bukowski
All quotes →when 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, can’t 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 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.
Charles BukowskiRead
Similar quotes
Someday I want to have children and give them all the love I never had.
Marilyn MonroeRead
A mother experiences more than one death, even though she herself will only die once. She fears for her husband; she fears for her children; again she fears for the women and children who belong to her children. ... For each of these-whether for loss of possessions, bodily illness, or undesired misfortune-she mourns and grieves no less than those who suffer.
Saint John ChrysostomRead
I'm not thuggin' for me, I'm thuggin' for my family, I pay all the bills, I feed my whole family, wrong or right, I do and I can't stop.
Tupac ShakurRead
Being pregnant was very much like falling in love. You are so open. You are so overjoyed. There's no words that can express having a baby growing inside of you so, of course, you want to scream it out and tell everyone.
Beyonce KnowlesRead
"Reverence for parents" stands written among the three laws of most revered righteousness.
AeschylusRead
It's taken me 40-something years, but I embrace the curl. My littlest daughter has the same hair. She likes it when my hair is curly, so I wear it for her.
Nicole KidmanRead