"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."
"I could see the road ahead of me. I was poor and I was going to stay poor. But I didn't particularly want money. I didn't know what I wanted. Yes, I did. I wanted someplace to hide out, someplace where one didn't have to do anything. The thought of being something didn't only appall me, it sickened me . . . To do things, to be part of family picnics, Christmas, the 4th of July, Labor Day, Mother's Day . . . was a man born just to endure those things and then die? I would rather be a dishwasher, return alone to a tiny room and drink myself to sleep."
Source: Charles Bukowski (2012). “The Pleasures of the Damned: Selected Poems 1951-1993”, p.494, Canongate Books
About the author