Irving > Irving's Quotes

“Unhappiness is the ultimate form of self-indulgence.”
― Tom Robbins

“Salvador Dali and fifty cents will get you a cup of clock melt. ”
― Tom Robbins, Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas

“Never be afraid to love, not even when there's a chance you're not being loved in return.”
― Tom Robbins, B Is for Beer: A Philosophical Investigation for Adults and Children into Reality and Beer

“she knew what she wanted and it wasn't / me. / I know more women like that than any / other kind.”
― Charles Bukowski, Love Is a Dog from Hell

“I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know?”
― Ernest Hemingway

“For I have known them all already,known them all.
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall,
Beneath the music from a farther room. So how should I presume?”
― T.S. Eliot, Prufrock and Other Observations

“A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan

“being alone never felt right. sometimes it felt good, but it never felt right.”
― Charles Bukowski, Women

“I was glad I wasn't in love, that I wasn't happy with the world. I like being at odds with everything. People in love often become edgy, dangerous. They lose their sense of perspective. They lose their sense of humor. They become nervous, psychotic bores. They even become killers.”
― Charles Bukowski, Women

“I was drawn to all the wrong things: I liked to drink, I was lazy, I didn't have a god, politics, ideas, ideals. I was settled into nothingness; a kind of non-being, and I accepted it. I didn't make for an interesting person. I didn't want to be interesting, it was too hard. What I really wanted was only a soft, hazy space to live in, and to be left alone. On the other hand, when I got drunk I screamed, went crazy, got all out of hand. One kind of behavior didn't fit the other. I didn't care.”
― Charles Bukowski, Women

“Goodness can be found sometimes in the middle of hell.”
― Charles Bukowski, Women

“Many a good man has been put under the bridge by a woman.”
― Charles Bukowski, Women

“I was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan

“I want
To do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.”
― Pablo Neruda, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

“It was at that age
that poetry came in search of me.”
― Pablo Neruda, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

“I am no longer in love with her, that's certain, but maybe I love her. Love is so short, forgetting is so long.”
― Pablo Neruda, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

“sometimes i get up at dawn, and even my soul is wet.”
― Pablo Neruda, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

“I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself, with only the music of my heart for company.”
― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

“I have found God, but he is insufficient.”
― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

“Words are loneliness.”
― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

“I made up my mind that I would hold onto nothing, that I would expect nothing.”
― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

“Your nearness is the nearness of planets. I am the void between you. If I withdraw there will be no void for you to swim in.”
― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

“When I realize that she is gone, perhaps gone forever, a great void opens up and I feel that I am falling, falling, falling into deep, black space. And this is worse than tears, deeper than regret or pain or sorrow, it is the abyss into which Satan was plunged. There is no climbing back, no ray of light, no sound of human voice or human touch of hand.”
― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

“there is a loneliness in this world so great
that you can see it in the slow movement of
the hands of a clock.

people so tired
mutilated
either by love or no love.

people just are not good to each other
one on one.

the rich are not good to the rich
the poor are not good to the poor.

we are afraid.

our educational system tells us
that we can all be
big-ass winners.

it hasn't told us
about the gutters
or the suicides.

or the terror of one person
aching in one place
alone

untouched
unspoken to

watering a plant.”
― Charles Bukowski, Love Is a Dog from Hell

“you boys can keep your virgins
give me hot old women in high heels
with asses that forgot to get old.”
― Charles Bukowski, Love Is a Dog from Hell

“in this land some of us fuck more than
we die but most of us die
better than we fuck”
― Charles Bukowski, Love Is a Dog from Hell

“one more creature
dizzy with love”
― Charles Bukowski, Love Is a Dog from Hell

“in nonsense is strength”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

“Goodbye blue Monday.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

“Roses are red,
And ready for plucking,
You're sixteen,
And ready for high school.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions