Rebecca Selah > Rebecca's Quotes

“We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.”
― Charles Bukowski

“Some lose all mind and become soul,insane.
some lose all soul and become mind, intellectual.
some lose both and become accepted”
― Charles Bukowski

“Nothing was ever in tune. People just blindly grabbed at whatever there was: communism, health foods, zen, surfing, ballet, hypnotism, group encounters, orgies, biking, herbs, Catholicism, weight-lifting, travel, withdrawal, vegetarianism, India, painting, writing, sculpting, composing, conducting, backpacking, yoga, copulating, gambling, drinking, hanging around, frozen yogurt, Beethoven, Back, Buddha, Christ, TM, H, carrot juice, suicide, handmade suits, jet travel, New York City, and then it all evaporated and fell apart. People had to find things to do while waiting to die. I guess it was nice to have a choice.”
― Charles Bukowski, Women

“the free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it - basically because you feel good, very good, when you are near or with them.”
― Charles Bukowski, Tales of Ordinary Madness

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

“I never met another man I'd rather be. And even if that's a delusion, it's a lucky one.”
― Charles Bukowski

“great writers are indecent people
they live unfairly
saving the best part for paper.

good human beings save the world
so that bastards like me can keep creating art,
become immortal.
if you read this after I am dead
it means I made it.”
― Charles Bukowski, The People Look Like Flowers at Last

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

“I wasn't a misanthrope and I wasn't a misogynist but I liked being alone. It felt good to sit alone in a small space and smoke and drink. I had always been good company for myself.”
― Charles Bukowski

“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

“Show me a man who lives alone and has a perpetually clean kitchen, and 8 times out of 9 I'll show you a man with detestable spiritual qualities.”
― Charles Bukowski

“Beware
Those Who
Are ALWAYS
READING
BOOKS”
― Charles Bukowski, The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966

“and when love came to us twice
and lied to us twice
we decided to never love again
that was fair
fair to us
and fair to love itself.

we ask for no mercy or no
miracles;
we are strong enough to live
and to die and to
kill flies,

attend the boxing matches, go to the racetrack,
live on luck and skill,
get alone, get alone often,
and if you can't sleep alone
be careful of the words you speak in your sleep;
and
ask for no mercy
no miracles;

and don't forget:
time is meant to be wasted,
love fails
and death is useless.”
― Charles Bukowski, What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire

“We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.”
― Charles Bukowski

“That's what friendship is, sharing the prejudice of experience.”
― Charles Bukowski

“If you want to create, you'll create...”
― Bukowski

“I see men assassinated around me every day. I walk through rooms of the dead, streets of the dead, cities of the dead; men without eyes, men without voices; men with manufactured feelings and standard reactions; men with newspaper brains, television souls and high school ideas. Kennedy himself was 9/10ths the way around the clock or he wouldn't have accepted such an enervating and enfeebling job -- meaning President of the United States of America. How can I be concerned with the murder of one man when almost all men, plus females, are taken from cribs as babies and almost immediately thrown into the masher?”
― Charles Bukowski, Charles Bukowski: Sunlight Here I Am: Interviews and Encounters 1963-1993

“I could scream down 90 mountains
to less than dust
if only one living human had eyes in the head
and heart in the body,
but there is no chance,
my god,
no chance.
rat with rat dog with dog hog with hog,
play the piano drunk
listen to the drunk piano,
realize the myth of mercy
stand still
as even a child's voice snarls
and we have not been fooled,
it was only that we wanted to believe.”
― Charles Bukowski, The People Look Like Flowers at Last

“Hey baby, when I write, I'm the hero of my shit.”
― Charles Bukowski

“it doesn't matter if Prince Charles falls off his horse
or that the hummingbird is so seldom
seen
or that we are too senseless to go
insane.

coffee. give us more of that NOTHING
coffee.”
― Charles Bukowski, You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense

“They laughed. Things were funny. They weren't afraid to care. There was no sense to life, to the structure of things.”
― Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye

“It’s so easy to be easy—if you let it.”
― Charles Bukowski, Love Is a Dog from Hell

“Sometimes you have to take the whole concept of Art and throw it out on its whore ass.”
― Charles Bukowski

“[...]the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.”
― Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

“Happiness consists in realizing it is all a great strange dream”
― Jack Kerouac

“Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion.”
― Jack Kerouac

“I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.”
― Jack Kerouac

“a sociable smile is nothing but a mouth full of teeth”
― Jack Kerouac

“Pain or love or danger makes you real again....”
― Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums