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 am not a snob; it is simply that I am not interested with what most people have to say, or what they want to do — mostly with my time.
Interpretation
The quote expresses a disregard for superficial interactions and emphasizes the importance of valuing one's time and conversations.
In this quote, Charles Bukowski reflects a personal philosophy that prioritizes meaningful engagement over common societal exchanges. He acknowledges his disinterest in the ordinary conversations of the majority, suggesting that his time is too precious to be spent on trivial matters. This sentiment can resonate with those who seek authenticity and depth in their relationships and interactions.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about prioritizing meaningful relationships over superficial ones.
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.
What the mysterious is I do not know. I do not call it God because God has come to mean much that I do not believe in. I find myself incapable of thinking of a deity or of any unknown supreme power in anthropomorphic terms, and the fact that many people think so is continually a source of surprise to me. Any idea of a personal God seems very odd to me.
Lord, catch me off guard today. Surprise me with some moment of beauty or pain so that at least for the moment, I may be startled into seeing that you are here in all your splendor, always and everywhere, barely hidden, beneath, beyond, within this life I breathe.
At the age when other children, I imagine, experience their first 'feeling' for a person, or for art, or for religion, I was affectionate, good, and even pious: by that I mean that under the influence of my mother, I was devoted to the Child Jesus.
What is it about childhood that never lets you go, even when you're so wrecked it's hard to believe you ever were a child?
When people learn no tools of judgment and merely follow their hopes, the seeds of political manipulation are sown.
Since Satan can't destroy the gospel, he has too often neutralized its usefulness by addition, subtraction or substitution.
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