Charles Bukowski

“we had goldfish and they circled around and aroundin the bowl on the table near the heavy drapescovering the picture window and my mother, always smiling, wanting us allto be happy, told me, “be happy, Henry!” and she was right: it’s better to be happy if youcanbut my father continued to beat her and me several times a week while raging inside his 6-foot-2 frame because he couldn’t understand what was attacking him from within. my mother, poor fish, wanting to be happy, beaten two or three times aweek, telling me to be happy: “Henry, smile!why don’t you ever smile?”and then she would smile, to show me how, and it was thesaddest smile I ever saw. one day the goldfish died, all five of them, they floated on the water, on their sides, theireyes still open,and when my father got home he threw them to the cat there on the kitchen floor and we watched as my mothersmiled.A smile to remember”

“That's your response to everything: drink?""No, that's my response to nothing.”

“Writing was never work for me. It had been the same for as long as I could remember: turn on the radio to a classical music station, light a cigarette or a cigar, open the bottle. The typer did the rest. All I had to do was be there. The whole process allowed me to continue when life itself offered very little, when life itself was a horror show. There was always the typer to soothe me, to talk to me, to entertain me, to save my ass. Basically that's why I wrote: to save my ass, to save my ass from the madhouse, from the streets, from myself.”

“I take much pleasure in being alonebut there is also a strange warm grace in not being alone.”

“L'umanità mi sta sul cazzo da sempre - ecco il mio motto.”

“The worst thing for a writer is to know another writer, and worse than that, to know a number of other writers. Like flies on the same turd.”

“There are still things to be handle; there will always be things to be handled. Nobody ever gets caught up and finished on what there is to do. And even if you do, for a moment, feel a central peace, there is always somebody walking behind you with a switchblade.”

“nobody can save you butyourself.you will be put again and againinto nearly impossiblesituations.they will attempt again and againthrough subterfuge, guise andforceto make you submit, quit and/or die quietlyinside.nobody can save you butyourself”

“Well, the rain had stopped but the pain was still there.”

“agony sometimes changes formbut it never ceases foranybody.”

“No me enorgullecía de mi soledad, pero dependía de ella. La oscuridad de la habitación era fortificante para mí como lo era la luz del sol para otros hombres.”

“Todos los domingos la gente venía y aspiraba aquel olor a meado y nadie decía nada. Quería hablarle al cura acerca de ello, pero no podía. Quizás fueran los cirios.”

“I knew it would be you”

“Now something so sad has hold of us that the breath leaves and we can't even cry.”

“the impossibility of being humanall too humanthis breathingin and outout and inthese punksthese cowardsthese championsthese mad dogs of glorymoving this little bit of light towardusimpossibly.”

“some men neverdieand some men neverlivebut we're all alivetonight.”

“But she projected vitality - you knew that she was there.”

“Careful poetry and careful people live only long enough to die safely.”

“Love is a fog that burns with the first daylight of reality.”

“and you go on toward your ocean, the cigar biting your lips the way love used to.”

“Well, people got attatched. Once you cut the umbilical cord they attatched to the other things. Sight, sound, sex, money, mirages, mothers, masturbation, murder, and Monday morning hangovers.”

“some men neverdieand some men never livebut we're all alive tonight.”

“We’ve all heard that little woman who says, “Oh, it’s terrible what these young people do to themselves, in my lsi other drugs, is a terrible thing”.Then you look, the woman who speaks in this way: you have no eyes, no teeth, no brains, no soul, no ass, no mouth, no warmth, no spirit, nothing, just a stick… and avran made ​​you wonder how to reduce it in that state teas and pastries and the church.”

“the nights you fight bestarewhen all the weapons are pointedat you,when all the voiceshurl their insultswhile the dream is beingstrangled.

“‎"she’ mad but she’magic. there’ no lie in her fire.”

“Lees je Céline?' vroeg een vrouwenstem. Haar stem klonk tamelijk sexy. Ik had me al een tijd eenzaam gevoeld. Tientallen jaren eigenlijk.[...]'Nou, aan de slag. Ik wil Frankrijks grootste schrijver. Ik wacht al heel lang.”

“Why do you haggle your beauty?” I asked. “Why don’t you just live withit?” “Because people think it’s all I have. Beauty is nothing, beauty won’t stay. Youdon’t know how lucky you are to be ugly, because if people like you you know it’s forsomething else.”

“LSD, yeah, the big parade – everybody's doin' it now. Take LSD, then you are a poet, an intellectual. What a sick mob. I am building a machine gun in my closet now to take out as many of them as I can before they get me.”

“Van Gogh writing his brother for paintsHemingway testing his shotgunCeline going broke as a doctor of medicinethe impossibility of being human”

“I've never met another man I'd rather be.”

“I like women who haven’t lived with too many men.I don’t expect virginity but I simply prefer womenwho haven’t been rubbed raw by experience.There is a quality about women who choosemen sparingly;it appears in their walkin their eyesin their laughter and in theirgentle hearts.Women who have had too many menseem to choose the next oneout of revenge rather than withfeeling.When you play the field selfishly everythingworks against you:one can’t insist on love ordemand affection.You’re finally left with whateveryou have been willing to givewhich often is:nothing.”

“take a writer away from his typewriterand all you have leftisthe sicknesswhich started himtypingin thebeginning”

“One more drink and you're dead. This is no way to talk to a suicide head.”

“Zircoff," I said, "put the tomatoes away." "Piss," he said, "I wish they were hand grenades.”

“She made the same money in ten minutes that I had made in a day with some hours thrown in. Monetarily speaking, it seemed sure as shit you were better off having a pussy than a cock.”

“She drove with the throttle to the floor and took the curves sliding and screeching and without expression. That was class. If she loved like she drove it was going to be a hell of a night.”

“What were you going to do tonight?" "I was going to listen to the songs of Rachmaninoff." "Who's that?" "A dead Russian.”

“To be young is the only religion.”

“L’autobus correva lungo una striscia di cemento molto stretta a pelo dell’acqua senza parapetto, niente; tutto lì. L’autista si appoggiava allo schienale e passava rombando su quella stretta striscia di cemento circondata dall’acqua e tutti i passeggeri dell’autobus, venticinque o quaranta o cinquantadue persone si fidavano di lui, ma io no. Ogni tanto c’era un nuovo autista e io pensavo, come li scelgono, questi figli di puttana? L’acqua è profonda su tutt’e due i lati e basta un piccolo errore per andare tutti al creatore. Era ridicolo. Mettiamo che quella mattina avesse litigato con la moglie. O che avesse il cancro. O che vedesse la Madonna. O che avesse i denti cariati. Qualunque cosa. Bastava un niente. Avrebbe potuto impazzire. Buttarci tutti di sotto. Sapevo che se ci fossi stato io, al suo posto, avrei preso in considerazione la possibilità di trascinare tutti in acqua. Mi sarebbe piaciuto. e qualche volta, dopo considerazioni del genere, la possibilità diventa realtà. Per ogni Giovanna d’Arco c’è un Hitler appollaiato dall’altra estremità dell’altalena. La vecchia storia del bene e del male. Ma nessuno di quegli autisti ci buttò mai di sotto. Pensavano soltanto alle rate della macchina, alla partita di baseball, al taglio dei capelli, alle ferie, ai clisteri, alle domeniche in famiglia. In quel branco di merdosi non c’era nemmeno un vero uomo. Arrivavo sempre al lavoro con la nausea ma sano e salvo. Il che dimostra che Schumann era più relativo di Shostakovich…”

“And if there is anybody out there who is crazy enough to want to become a writer, I'd say go ahead, spit in the eye of the sun, hit those keys, it's the best madness going, the centuries need help, the species cry for light and gamble and laughter. Give it to them. There are enough words for all of us.”

“Your writing", she said to me, "it's so raw. It's like a sledgehammer, and yet it has humor and tenderness. . . .”

“Lydia screamed. The car began to swerve all over the street. "YOU SON-OF-A-BITCH! I'LL KILL YOU!" She crossed the double yellow line at high speed, directly into oncoming traffic. Horns sounded and cars scattered. We drove on against the flow of traffic, cars approaching us peeling off to the left and right. Then just as abruptly Lydia swerved back across the double line into the lane we had just vacated. Where are the police? I thought. Why is it that when Lydia does something the police become nonexistent?”

“Only the boring get bored”

“I read my books at night, like that, under the quilt with the overheated reading lamp. Reading all those good lines while suffocating. It was magic.”

“a good bookcan make an almostimpossibleexistence,liveable( from 'the luck of the word' )”

“God damn the geraniums! ...It was like trying to screw during an aerial attack.”

“Slova nebyla nudná, slova byla věcmi, které dokázaly přinutit vaši mysl, aby se hýbala. Když jste je četli a nechali se prostoupit tím kouzlem, mohli jste žít bez bolesti, s nadějí, bez ohledu na to, co se vám přihodilo... Četl jsem své knihy po nocích, takhle pod přikrývkou s přehrátou stolní lampou. Četl jsem všechny ty dobré řádky, zatímco jsem se dusil. Bylo to kouzelné.”

“The blankets had fallen off and I stared down at her white back, the shoulder blades sticking out as if they wanted to grow into wings, poke through that skin. Little blades. She was helpless.”

“you are on the freeway threading through traffic now,moving both towards something and towards nothing at all as you punchthe radio on and get Mozart, which is something, and you will somehowget through the slow days and the busy days and the dulldays and the hateful days and the rare days, all both so delightfuland so disappointing becausewe are all so alike and so different.”

“from the beginning, through themiddle years and up to theend:too bad, too bad, too bad.”