He has two faces: He can't love without self-love.
Somebody has to have the last word. Otherwise, every reason can be answered with another one and there would never be an end to it.
You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.
It is always better to go to bed with a mystery.
One day you find yourself taking without really desiring.
Martyrs must choose between being forgotten, mocked, or made use of. As for being understood-never!
To be happy it is essential not to be too concerned with others. Consequently, there is no escape. Happy and judged, or absolved and wretched.
People hasten to judge in order not to be judged themselves.
A liking for truth at any cost is a passion that spares nothing and that nothing resists.
What we call basic truths are simply the ones we discover after all the others.
It is not enough to accuse yourself in order to clear yourself.
Alcohol and [men] provided me, I admit, the only solace of which I was worthy.
True debauchery is liberating because it creates no obligations. In it you possess only yourself. It is a jungle without past or future, without any promise above all, not any immediate penalty. The places where it is practiced are separated from the world. On entering, one leaves behind fear and hope. Conversation is not obligatory there; what one comes for can be had without words, and often indeed without money.
Physical jealousy is a result of the imagination at the same time it is a self-judgement. One attributes to the rival the nasty thoughts one had oneself in the same circumstances.
God is not needed to create guilt or to punish. Our fellow men suffice, aided by ourselves.
Don't wait for the Last Judgement. It takes place everyday.
A person I knew used to divide human beings into three categories: those who prefer having nothing to hide rather than being obliged to lie, those who prefer lying to having nothing to hide, and finally those who like both lying and the hidden.
Sometimes it is easier to see clearly into the liar than into the man who tells the truth. Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.
I have a very old and very faithful attachments to dogs. I like them because they always forgive.
One must forgive the pope. To begin with, he needs it more than anyone else. Secondly, that's the only way to set oneself above him...
We are odd, wretched creatures, and if we merely look back over our lives, there's no lack of occasions to amaze and horrify ourselves.
Monday, March 18, 2013
Quotes from 'More Notes From A Dirty Old Man' by Charles Bukowski
The face, open with passion, like a flower ripped open with the fingers from the bud, a kind of fire-cheating, and the body, the body was nothing but SEX, sex standing still jumping singing looking flowing humming.
A woman practices rearing the child by taming the man first.
Love is a form of selfishness. Love is an excuse for cowards to quit.
I nailed her in the center of the rug, I had her on the cross, it was too late for her, she was on the spike, ripped ripped.
Marriage is a contract to live in dullness until death do us part.
Hundreds of thousands of lonely and frustrated men and women living mostly without sex and certainly without love, working at jobs they hate, running red lights, crashing into fire plugs and store windows, gambling, drinking, taking dope, smoking 2 packs a day, masturbating, going crazy, going crazier and crazier, getting religious, buying goldfish and cats and monkeys... Hundreds and thousands of lonely and frustrated men and women who settle for Disneyland instead of love, who settle for a baseball game instead of sex... Hundreds of thousands of lonely and frustrated men and women who'll pass each other on the sidewalk and be afraid to look at each other's faces, at each other's eyes for fear they'll be accused of being on the make. Blocks and walls of horror-movie magazines, girly magazines, nudey magazines, nude movies, vibrators, dirty jokes - everything but contact and real action.
We murder ourselves with sex and occupation; the madhouses crawl with sexually maladjusted and occupationally-destroyed people. Answers? Who knows? We're structured in. The bars are heavy.
Sometimes when I'm talking I improve on things to make them better. Some people might call it lying; I call it an art-form.
I find that when the pain gets bad enough there are only three things to do - get drunk, kill yourself or laugh. I usually get drunk and laugh.
There are really only two types of people in this world: the noble and the fucked.
"What do you know about sex?"
"Plenty."
"O.K., what is it?
"It's something to do to make yourself feel good so you can go on and do all the things that don't make you feel so good."
Sex was doing what you weren't supposed to do. That's one reason marriage didn't work; it became a job instead of a raid into the unknown.
It revolved with the power of the mare who knew she was there, still dangerous and damned able; not just able to catch the cock but the soul, too.
I knew that any of us could get lost away from the crowd, some of us even wanted to.
Many of the famous are famous not because their work is excellent and original but because the masses identify with the output. And they don't identify with it because it's real but because it is false and most of them are false in their ideals, their actions, their lives.
He is a carbon copy of the masses.
I know that I am supposed to love my fellow man but I don't. I don't hate him; I often dislike him; I just don't want him about. I feel better alone.
I loved Solitude. Still do. I grow when I'm alone. People diminish me. Especially men, they seem quite unoriginal. Women, at times, are useful. Also they are funny and tragic. But too many continued hours and days with them leads to madness.
Nothing diminishes me like the crowd.
I have certain inherent rights to oneness and that I am my own keeper.
Brilliant men are created out of desperate circumstances; fools are also.
Fame is too often the result of bad public taste; Immorality too often a matter of poor critical judgement.
A whore is a woman who takes more than she gives. A man who takes more than he gives is called a businessman.
When agony of all the people is heard, nothing will be done.
The best people are the ones you never meet.
A criminal might be defined as one outnumbered by those who generally don't do what he does except in secret or different ways.
It's exactly as good as it's ever going to get.
A woman practices rearing the child by taming the man first.
Love is a form of selfishness. Love is an excuse for cowards to quit.
I nailed her in the center of the rug, I had her on the cross, it was too late for her, she was on the spike, ripped ripped.
Marriage is a contract to live in dullness until death do us part.
Hundreds of thousands of lonely and frustrated men and women living mostly without sex and certainly without love, working at jobs they hate, running red lights, crashing into fire plugs and store windows, gambling, drinking, taking dope, smoking 2 packs a day, masturbating, going crazy, going crazier and crazier, getting religious, buying goldfish and cats and monkeys... Hundreds and thousands of lonely and frustrated men and women who settle for Disneyland instead of love, who settle for a baseball game instead of sex... Hundreds of thousands of lonely and frustrated men and women who'll pass each other on the sidewalk and be afraid to look at each other's faces, at each other's eyes for fear they'll be accused of being on the make. Blocks and walls of horror-movie magazines, girly magazines, nudey magazines, nude movies, vibrators, dirty jokes - everything but contact and real action.
We murder ourselves with sex and occupation; the madhouses crawl with sexually maladjusted and occupationally-destroyed people. Answers? Who knows? We're structured in. The bars are heavy.
Sometimes when I'm talking I improve on things to make them better. Some people might call it lying; I call it an art-form.
I find that when the pain gets bad enough there are only three things to do - get drunk, kill yourself or laugh. I usually get drunk and laugh.
There are really only two types of people in this world: the noble and the fucked.
"What do you know about sex?"
"Plenty."
"O.K., what is it?
"It's something to do to make yourself feel good so you can go on and do all the things that don't make you feel so good."
Sex was doing what you weren't supposed to do. That's one reason marriage didn't work; it became a job instead of a raid into the unknown.
It revolved with the power of the mare who knew she was there, still dangerous and damned able; not just able to catch the cock but the soul, too.
I knew that any of us could get lost away from the crowd, some of us even wanted to.
Many of the famous are famous not because their work is excellent and original but because the masses identify with the output. And they don't identify with it because it's real but because it is false and most of them are false in their ideals, their actions, their lives.
He is a carbon copy of the masses.
I know that I am supposed to love my fellow man but I don't. I don't hate him; I often dislike him; I just don't want him about. I feel better alone.
I loved Solitude. Still do. I grow when I'm alone. People diminish me. Especially men, they seem quite unoriginal. Women, at times, are useful. Also they are funny and tragic. But too many continued hours and days with them leads to madness.
Nothing diminishes me like the crowd.
I have certain inherent rights to oneness and that I am my own keeper.
Brilliant men are created out of desperate circumstances; fools are also.
Fame is too often the result of bad public taste; Immorality too often a matter of poor critical judgement.
A whore is a woman who takes more than she gives. A man who takes more than he gives is called a businessman.
When agony of all the people is heard, nothing will be done.
The best people are the ones you never meet.
A criminal might be defined as one outnumbered by those who generally don't do what he does except in secret or different ways.
It's exactly as good as it's ever going to get.
Thursday, March 14, 2013
Quotes from 'Shantaram' by Gregory David Roberts
And the choice you make, between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life.
The past reflects between two mirrors - the bright mirror of words and deeds, and the dark one, full of things we didn't do or say.
Love is the opposite of power. That's why we fear it so much.
A dream is the place where a wish and fear meet. When the fear and wish are exactly the same, we call the dream a nightmare.
There is no act of faith more beautiful than the generosity of the very poor.
The sane man is simply a better liar than the insane man.
I think that when we grow up, and learn that happiness is rare, and passes quickly, we become, disillusioned and hurt. And how much we suffer is a mark of how much we have been hurt by this realization. Suffering is a mark of how much we have been hurt by this realisation. Suffering you see is a kind of anger. We rage against the unfairness, the injustice of our sad sorry lot. And this boiling resentment, you see, this anger, is what we call suffering.
Sometimes we love with nothing more than hope. Sometimes we cry with everything except tears. In the end that's all there is: love and it's duty, sorrow and it's truth. In the end that's all we have - to hold on tight until the dawn.
News tells you what people did. Gossip tells you how much they enjoyed it.
The contours of all our virtues are shaped by adversity.
It's not just the body that must survive: the spirit and the will and the heart have to make it through as well. If any one of them is broken or destroyed, the man whose living body walks through the gate, can't be said to have survived.
If you make your heart into a weapon, you always end up using it on yourself.
If we all learned what we should learn, the first time around, we wouldn't need love at all.
A fanatic is someone who won't change his mind and can't change the subject.
At first, when we truly love someone, our greatest fear is that the loved one will stop loving us. What we should fear and dread, of course, is that we won't stop loving them, even after they're dead and gone. For I still love you with the whole of my heart. I still love you. And sometimes, the love that I have, and can't give to you, crushes the breath from my chest. Sometimes, even now, my heart is drowning in a sorrow that has no stars without you, and no laughter, and no sleep.
A good man is as strong as the right woman needs him to be.
You can't kill love. You can't even kill it with hate. You can kill in-love, and loving, and even loveliness. You can kill them all, or numb them into dense, leaden regret, but you can't kill love itself. Love is the passionate search for a truth other than your own; and once you feel it, honestly and completely, love is forever.
The sorrowing I'd shunned had taken so long to find me because I couldn't let him go.
All of the powerful men I knew were afraid, and cruel. That is the...mix...that gave them power over other men.
When we do hate, it is with the whole of the soul, and it can never forgive the hated one.
Silences can wound as surely as the twisting lash, but sometimes, being silent is the only way to tell the truth.
The cloak of the past is cut from patches of feeling, and sewn with rebus threads. Most of the time, the best we can do is wrap it around ourselves for comfort or drag is behind us as we struggle to go on. But, everything has it's cause and meaning. Every life, every love, every action and feeling and thought has it's reason and significance: its beginning, and the part it plays in the end.
Nothing in any life, no matter how well or poorly lived, is wiser than failure or clearer than sorrow. And in the tiny, precious wisdom they gave to us, even those dread and hated enemies, suffering and failure, have their reason and right to be.
The smell of money was like the sweat and dirt on a gravedigger's boots.
The only power that has any real meaning is the power to better the world.
Anger softened into sorrow, as it always does, as it always must. And no part of what we'd wanted, just an hour's life before, was as rich in hope or meaning as a single teardrop's fall.
Every human heartbeat is a universe of possibilities,
No matter what kind of game you find yourself in, no matter how good or bad the luck, you can change your life completely with a single thought or a single act of love.
Music: WildLife 'On The Heart'
The past reflects between two mirrors - the bright mirror of words and deeds, and the dark one, full of things we didn't do or say.
Love is the opposite of power. That's why we fear it so much.
A dream is the place where a wish and fear meet. When the fear and wish are exactly the same, we call the dream a nightmare.
There is no act of faith more beautiful than the generosity of the very poor.
The sane man is simply a better liar than the insane man.
I think that when we grow up, and learn that happiness is rare, and passes quickly, we become, disillusioned and hurt. And how much we suffer is a mark of how much we have been hurt by this realization. Suffering is a mark of how much we have been hurt by this realisation. Suffering you see is a kind of anger. We rage against the unfairness, the injustice of our sad sorry lot. And this boiling resentment, you see, this anger, is what we call suffering.
Sometimes we love with nothing more than hope. Sometimes we cry with everything except tears. In the end that's all there is: love and it's duty, sorrow and it's truth. In the end that's all we have - to hold on tight until the dawn.
News tells you what people did. Gossip tells you how much they enjoyed it.
The contours of all our virtues are shaped by adversity.
It's not just the body that must survive: the spirit and the will and the heart have to make it through as well. If any one of them is broken or destroyed, the man whose living body walks through the gate, can't be said to have survived.
If you make your heart into a weapon, you always end up using it on yourself.
If we all learned what we should learn, the first time around, we wouldn't need love at all.
A fanatic is someone who won't change his mind and can't change the subject.
At first, when we truly love someone, our greatest fear is that the loved one will stop loving us. What we should fear and dread, of course, is that we won't stop loving them, even after they're dead and gone. For I still love you with the whole of my heart. I still love you. And sometimes, the love that I have, and can't give to you, crushes the breath from my chest. Sometimes, even now, my heart is drowning in a sorrow that has no stars without you, and no laughter, and no sleep.
A good man is as strong as the right woman needs him to be.
You can't kill love. You can't even kill it with hate. You can kill in-love, and loving, and even loveliness. You can kill them all, or numb them into dense, leaden regret, but you can't kill love itself. Love is the passionate search for a truth other than your own; and once you feel it, honestly and completely, love is forever.
The sorrowing I'd shunned had taken so long to find me because I couldn't let him go.
All of the powerful men I knew were afraid, and cruel. That is the...mix...that gave them power over other men.
When we do hate, it is with the whole of the soul, and it can never forgive the hated one.
Silences can wound as surely as the twisting lash, but sometimes, being silent is the only way to tell the truth.
The cloak of the past is cut from patches of feeling, and sewn with rebus threads. Most of the time, the best we can do is wrap it around ourselves for comfort or drag is behind us as we struggle to go on. But, everything has it's cause and meaning. Every life, every love, every action and feeling and thought has it's reason and significance: its beginning, and the part it plays in the end.
Nothing in any life, no matter how well or poorly lived, is wiser than failure or clearer than sorrow. And in the tiny, precious wisdom they gave to us, even those dread and hated enemies, suffering and failure, have their reason and right to be.
The smell of money was like the sweat and dirt on a gravedigger's boots.
The only power that has any real meaning is the power to better the world.
Anger softened into sorrow, as it always does, as it always must. And no part of what we'd wanted, just an hour's life before, was as rich in hope or meaning as a single teardrop's fall.
Every human heartbeat is a universe of possibilities,
No matter what kind of game you find yourself in, no matter how good or bad the luck, you can change your life completely with a single thought or a single act of love.
Music: WildLife 'On The Heart'
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