"Understand me. I’m not like an ordinary world. I have my madness, I live in another dimension and I do not have time for things that have no soul."
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Quote collection
Charles Bukowski quotes (page 1 of 41)
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"The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence."
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"Can you remember who you were, before the world told you who you should be?"
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"People are strange: They are constantly angered by trivial things, but on a major matter like totally wasting their lives, they hardly seem to notice."
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"Find what you love and let it kill you."
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"The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose, they sliced a little more off you, until there was nothing left. At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole goddamned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidate who reminded them most of themselves."
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"I lapsed into my pathetic cut-off period. Often with humans, both good and bad, my senses simply shut off, they get tired, I give up. I am polite. I nod. I pretend to understand because I don’t want anybody to be hurt. That is the one weakness that has lead me into the most trouble. Trying to be kind to others I often get my soul shredded into a kind of spiritual pasta. No matter. My brain shuts off. I listen. I respond. And they are too dumb to know that I am not there."
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"I will remember the kisses our lips raw with love and how you gave me everything you had and how I offered you what was left of me, and I will remember your small room the feel of you the light in the window your records your books our morning coffee our noons our nights our bodies spilled together sleeping the tiny flowing currents immediate and forever your leg my leg your arm my arm your smile and the warmth of you who made me laugh again."
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"If something burns your soul with purpose and desire, it’s your duty to be reduced to ashes by it. Any other form of existence will be yet another dull book in the library of life."
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"Love is a fog that burns with the first daylight of reality."
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"Sometimes I feel as if we are all trapped in a movie. We know our lines, where to walk, how to act, only there is no camera. Yet, we can't break out of the movie. And it's a bad one."
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"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."
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"You have to die a few times before you can really live."
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"I stopped looking for a Dream Girl, I just wanted one that wasn't a nightmare."
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"Do you hate people? I don't hate them...I just feel better when they're not around."
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"Some people never go crazy, What truly horrible lives they must live."
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"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."
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"There's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I pour whiskey on him and inhale cigarette smoke and the whores and the bartenders and the grocery clerks never know that he's in there."
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"Some people like what you do, some people hate what you do, but most people simply don't give a damn."
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"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."
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