Blazej > Blazej's Quotes

“He found himself one night in a bar standing beside a gorgeous woman. “Would you be willing to sleep with me for $1 million?” he asked her. She looked him over. There wasn’t much to see—but still, $1 million! She agreed to go back to his room. “All right then, “ he said. “Would you be willing to sleep with me for $100?” “A hundred dollars!” she shot back. “What do you think I am, a prostitute?” “We’ve already established that. Now we’re just negotiating the price.”
― Steven D. Levitt, Think Like a Freak

“Don’t listen to what people say; watch what they do.”
― Steven D. Levitt, Think Like a Freak

“The non-profit industry itself, “the most dysfunctional $300 billion industry in the world,” as he saw it. Mullaney had come to believe that too many philanthropists engage in what Peter Buffett, a son of the über-billionaire Warren Buffett, calls “conscience laundering”—doing charity to make themselves feel better rather than fighting to figure out the best ways to alleviate suffering.”
― Steven D. Levitt, Think Like a Freak

“Trying to keep a public men’s room clean? Sure, go ahead and put up signs urging people to pee neatly—or, better, paint a housefly on the urinal and watch the male instinct for target practice take over.”
― Steven D. Levitt, Think Like a Freak

“One can imagine many patients being turned off by the words fecal transplant or, as researchers call it in their academic papers, “fecal microbiota transplantation.” The slang used by some doctors (“shit swap”) is no better. But Borody, after years of performing this procedure, believes he has finally come up with a less disturbing name. “Yes,” he says, “we call it a ‘transpoosion.”
― Steven D. Levitt, Think Like a Freak

“3.  Once people are asked to donate, the social pressure is so great that they get bullied into giving, even though they wish they’d never been asked in the first place. Mullaney knew that number 3 was important to Smile Train’s success. That’s why their millions of mailings included a photograph of a disfigured child in need of cleft surgery. While no fund-raiser in his right mind would ever publicly admit to manipulating donors with social pressure, everyone knew how strong this incentive was. But what if, Mullaney thought, instead of downplaying the pressure, Smile Train were to highlight it? That is, what if Smile Train offered potential donors a way to alleviate the social pressure and give money at the same time? That’s how a strategy known as “once-and-done” was born. Here’s what Smile Train would tell potential donors: Make one gift now and we’ll never ask for another donation again.”
― Steven D. Levitt, Think Like a Freak

“The best way to increase wolves in America, rabbits in Australia, and snakes in India is to pay a bounty on their scalps. Then every patriot goes to raising them.”
― Steven D. Levitt, Think Like a Freak

“My ambition is handicapped by laziness”
― Charles Bukowski, Factotum

“It was true that I didn’t have much ambition, but there ought to be a place for people without ambition, I mean a better place than the one usually reserved. How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?”
― Charles Bukowski, Factotum

“When I went to the Yellow Cab Company I passed the Cancer Building and I remembered that there were worse things than looking for a job you didn't want.”
― Charles Bukowski, Factotum

“I measured love by the extent of my jealousy.”
― Graham Greene, The End of the Affair

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

“In the morning it was morning and I was still alive.”
― Charles Bukowski, Post Office

“I went to the bathroom and threw some water on my face, combed my hair. If I could only comb that face, I thought, but I can't.”
― Charles Bukowski, Post Office

“The first place smelled like work, so I took the second.”
― Charles Bukowski, Post Office

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

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

“I think I need a drink.'
'Almost everybody does only they don't know it.”
― Charles Bukowski, Women

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

“I was in love again. I was in trouble”
― Charles Bukowski, Women

“A man could lose his identity fucking around too much.”
― Charles Bukowski, Women

“Love is all right for those who can handle the psychic overload. It’s like trying to carry a full garbage can on your back over a rushing river of piss.”
― Charles Bukowski, Women

“My cock was hard, but my spirit wasn't in it.”
― Charles Bukowski, Women

“That’s the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.”
― Charles Bukowski, Women

“Are you becoming what you've always hated?”
― Charles Bukowski, Hollywood

“Money is like sex,' I said. 'It seems much more important when you don't have any...'

'You talk like a writer,' said Francois.”
― Charles Bukowski, Hollywood

“What will you do?"
"Oh, hell, I'll write a novel about writing the screenplay and making the movie."
"What are you going to call it?"
"Hollywood."
"Hollywood?"
"Yes...”
― Charles Bukowski, Hollywood

“You are thirty minutes late."
"Yes."
"Would you be thirty minutes late to a wedding or a funeral?"
"No."
"Why not, pray tell?"
"Well, if the funeral was mine I'd have to be on time. If the wedding was mine it would be my funeral.”
― Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye

“Fiction is an improvement on life”
― Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye

“It seemed better to delay thinking.”
― Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye