Kerry > Kerry's Quotes

“I meet a person, and in my mind I'm saying three minutes; I give you three minutes to show me the spark.”
― Amy Hempel, The Collected Stories

“I moved through the days like a severed head that finishes a sentence.”
― Amy Hempel

“I would like to go for a ride with you, have you take me to stand before a river in the dark where hundreds of lightning bugs blink this code in sequence: right here, nowhere else! Right now, never again!”
― Amy Hempel, Tumble Home: A Novella and Short Stories

“your problem is that you wanna better word for world”
― Bob Dylan, Tarantula

“what matters most is how well you walk through the fire”
― Charles Bukowski

“I loved you like a man loves a woman he never touches, only writes to, keeps little photographs of.”
― Charles Bukowski, Love Is a Dog from Hell

“Poetry is what happens when nothing else can.”
― Charles Bukowski

“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”
― Charles Bukowski, Women

“It was like the beginning of life and laughter. It was the real meaning of the sun”
― Charles Bukowski, Factotum

“unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.”
― Charles Bukowski

“dogs and angels are not
very far apart”
― Charles Bukowski, The People Look Like Flowers at Last

“Style is the answer to everything.
A fresh way to approach a dull or dangerous thing
To do a dull thing with style is preferable to doing a dangerous thing without it
To do a dangerous thing with style is what I call art

Bullfighting can be an art
Boxing can be an art
Loving can be an art
Opening a can of sardines can be an art

Not many have style
Not many can keep style
I have seen dogs with more style than men,
although not many dogs have style.
Cats have it with abundance.

When Hemingway put his brains to the wall with a shotgun,
that was style.
Or sometimes people give you style
Joan of Arc had style
John the Baptist
Jesus
Socrates
Caesar
García Lorca.

I have met men in jail with style.
I have met more men in jail with style than men out of jail.
Style is the difference, a way of doing, a way of being done.
Six herons standing quietly in a pool of water,
or you, naked, walking out of the bathroom without seeing me.”
― Charles Bukowski

“you've got to burn
straight up and down
and then maybe sidewise
for a while
and have your guts
scrambled by a
bully
and the demonic
ladies,
you've got to run
along the edge of
madness
teetering,
you've got to starve
like a winter
alleycat,
you've go to live
with the imbecility
of at least a dozen
cities,
then maybe
maybe
maybe
you might know
where you are
for a tiny
blinking
moment.”
― Charles Bukowski, Bone Palace Ballet: New Poems

“the tigers have found me
and I do not care.”
― Charles Bukowski

“The fuckers. There, I feel better. God-damned human race. There, I feel better.”
― Charles Bukowski, The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship

“It was better for me when I could imagine greatness in others, even if it wasn't always there.”
― Charles Bukowski, The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship

“Yes Yes

when God created love he didn't help most
when God created dogs He didn't help dogs
when God created plants that was average
when God created hate we had a standard utility
when God created me He created me
when God created the monkey He was asleep
when He created the giraffe He was drunk
when He created narcotics He was high
and when He created suicide He was low

when He created you lying in bed
He knew what He was doing
He was drunk and He was high
and He created the mountains and the sea and fire at the same time

He made some mistakes
but when He created you lying in bed
He came all over His Blessed Universe.”
― Charles Bukowski

“nothing can save
you
except
writing.
it keeps the walls
from
failing.”
― Charles Bukowski

“purple does something strange to me”
― Charles Bukowski, The People Look Like Flowers at Last

“they thought I had guts
they were wrong
I was only frightened of
more important things”
― Charles Bukowski

“Don't try.”
― Charles Bukowski

“Find what you love and let it kill you.”
― Charles Bukowski

“New Year's Eve always terrifies me.”
― Charles Bukowski, Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame

“we know God is dead, they've told us, but listening to you I wasn't sure.”
― Charles Bukowski, Love Is a Dog from Hell

“Trapped

don't undress my love
you might find a mannequin:
don't undress the mannequin
you might find
my love.
she's long ago
forgotten me.
she's trying on a new
hat
and looks more the
coquette
than ever.

she is a
child
and a mannequin
and death.
I can't hate
that.
she didn't do
anything
unusual.
I only wanted her
to.”
― Charles Bukowski, Love Is a Dog from Hell

“I was only kidding about the hundred," she says.

oh," I say, "what will it cost me?"

she lights her cigarette with
my lighter and looks at me
through the flame:

her eyes tell me.

look," I say, "I don't think I
can ever pay that price again.”
― Charles Bukowski, Love Is a Dog from Hell

“Run with the hunted.”
― Charles Bukowski

“but right now
it's Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan Bob
Dylan all the
way.”
― Charles Bukowski, Love Is a Dog from Hell

“Oh, I don’t mean you’re handsome, not the way people think of handsome. Your face seems kind. But your eyes - they’re beautiful. They’re wild, crazy, like some animal peering out of a forest on fire.”
― Charles Bukowski, Women

“Some nights I knew that if I slept I would die.”
― Charles Bukowski, Hollywood