Background Image

...

There's Nothing To Mourn About Death Any More Than There Is To Mourn About The Growing Of A Flower. What Is Terrible Is Not Death But The Lives People Live Or Don't Live Up Until Their Death. They Don't Honor Their Own Lives ... Their Minds Are Full Of Cotton. They Swallow God Without Thinking, They Swallow Country Without Thinking. Soon They Forget How To Think, They Let Others Think For Them.... Most People's Deaths Are A Sham. There's Nothing Left To Die.

-Charles Bukowski

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

There's Nothing To Mourn

Charles Bukowski

...

There's Nothing To Mourn About Death Any More Than There Is To Mourn About The Growing Of A Flower. What Is Terrible Is Not Death But The Lives People Live Or Don't Live Up Until Their Death. They Don't Honor Their Own Lives ... Their Minds Are Full Of Cotton. They Swallow God Without Thinking, They Swallow Country Without Thinking. Soon They Forget How To Think, They Let Others Think For Them.... Most People's Deaths Are A Sham. There's Nothing Left To Die.

Views: 10

Topic

More From Charles Bukowski

Few Beautiful Women Were Willing To Indicate In Public That They Belonged To Someone. I Had Known Enough Women To Realize This. I Accepted Them For What They Were And Love Came Hard And Very Seldom. When It Did It Was Usually For The Wrong Reasons. One Simply Became Tired Of Holding Back Love And Let It Go Because It Needed Some Place To Go. Then, Usually, There Was Trouble.

Unless The Sun Inside You Is Burning Your Gut, Don't Do It

I Give You Soul. I Give You Wisdom And Light And Music And A Bit Of Laughter. Also, I Am The World's Greatest Horseplayer.

This Is A World Where Everybody’s Gotta Do Something. Ya Know, Somebody Laid Down This Rule That Everybody’s Gotta Do Something, They Gotta Be Something. You Know, A Dentist, A Glider Pilot, A Narc, A Janitor, A Preacher, All That . . . Sometimes I Just Get Tired Of Thinking Of All The Things That I Don’t Wanna Do. All The Things That I Don’t Wanna Be. Places I Don’t Wanna Go, Like India, Like Getting My Teeth Cleaned. Save The Whale, All That, I Don’t Understand That . . .

Some Men Hope For Revolution But When You Revolt And Set Up Your New Government You Find Your New Government Is Still The Same Old Papa, He Has Only Put On A Cardboard Mask.

People Run From Rain But Sit In Bathtubs Full Of Water.

Early Evening Traffic Was Beginning To Clog The Avenue With Cars. The Sun Slanted Down Behind Him. Harry Glanced At The Drivers Of The Cars. They Seemed Unhappy. The World Was Unhappy. People Were In The Dark. People Were Terrified And Disappointed. People Were Caught In Traps. People Were Defensive And Frantic. They Felt As If Their Lives Were Being Wasted. And They Were Right.

I Read My Books At Night, Like That, Under The Quilt With The Overheated Reading Lamp. Reading All Those Good Lines While Suffocating. It Was Magic.

And Don't Forget: Time Is Meant To Be Wasted, Love Fails And Death Is Useless.

Little Sun Little Moon Little Dog And A Little To Eat And A Little To Love And A Little To Live For In A Little Room Filled With Little Mice Who Gnaw And Dance And Run While I Sleep Waiting For A Little Death In The Middle Of A Little Morning In A Little City In A Little State My Little Mother Dead My Little Father Dead In A Little Cemetery Somewhere. I Have Only A Little Time To Tell You This: Watch Out For Little Death When He Comes Running But Like All The Billions Of Little Deaths It Will Finally Mean Nothing And Everything: All Your Little Tears Burning Like The Dove, Wasted.

There's Nothing To Stop A Man From Writing Unless That Man Stops Himself. If A Man Truly Desires To Write, Then He Will. Rejection And Ridicule Will Only Strengthen Him. And The Longer He Is Held Back The Stronger He Will Become, Like A Mass Of Rising Water Against A Dam. There Is No Losing In Writing, It Will Make Your Toes Laugh As You Sleep, It Will Make You Stride Like A Tiger, It Will Fire The Eye And Put You Face To Face With Death. You Will Die A Fighter, You Will Be Honored In Hell. The Luck Of The Word. Go With It, Send It.

I Was Beaten Down Long Ago In Some Alley In Another World.

A Man Needed Somebody. There Wasn't Anybody Around, So You Had To Make Up Somebody, Make Him Up To Be Like A Man Should Be. It Wasn't Make-believe Or Cheating. The Other Way Was Make-believe And Cheating: Living Your Life Without A Man Like Him Around.

Women: I Liked The Colors Of Their Clothing; The Way They Walked; The Cruelty In Some Faces; Now And Then The Almost Pure Beauty In Another Face, Totally And Enchantingly Female. They Had It Over Us: They Planned Much Better And Were Better Organized. While Men Were Watching Professional Football Or Drinking Beer Or Bowling, They, The Women, Were Thinking About Us, Concentrating, Studying, Deciding - Whether To Accept Us, Discard Us, Exchange Us, Kill Us Or Whether Simply To Leave Us. In The End It Hardly Mattered; No Matter What They Did, We Ended Up Lonely And Insane.

Meanwhile The 3 A.m. Drunks Of The World Would Lay In Their Beds, Trying In Vain To Sleep, And Deserving That Rest, If They Could Find It.

I Had No Interests. I Had No Interest In Anything. I Had No Idea How I Was Going To Escape. At Least The Others Had Some Taste For Life. They Seemed To Understand Something That I Didn’t Understand. Maybe I Was Lacking. It Was Possible. I Often Felt Inferior. I Just Wanted To Get Away From Them. But There Was No Place To Go. Suicide? Jesus Christ, Just More Work. I Felt Like Sleeping For Five Years But They Wouldn’t Let Me.

Pretty Words, As Pretty Women, Wrinkle Up And Die.

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.

Writing Is Something That You Don't Know How To Do. You Sit Down And It's Something That Happens, Or It May Not Happen. So, How Can You Teach Anybody How To Write? It's Beyond Me, Because You Yourself Don't Even Know If You're Going To Be Able To. I'm Always Worried, Well, You Know, Every Time I Go Upstairs With My Wine Bottle. Sometimes I'll Sit At That Typewriter For Fifteen Minutes, You Know. I Don't Go Up There To Write. The Typewriter's Up There. If It Doesn't Start Moving, I Say, Well This Could Be The Night That I Hit The Dust.

I Wish To Weep But Sorrow Is Stupid. I Wish To Believe But Belief Is A Graveyard.

People In Love Often Become Edgy, Dangerous. They Lose Their Sense Of Perspective.

Beware Those Quick To Praise For They Need Praise In Return Beware Those Who Are Quick To Censor They Are Afraid Of What They Do Not Know Beware Those Who Seek Constant Crowds For They Are Nothing Alone Beware The Average Man The Average Woman Beware Their Love, Their Love Is Average Seeks Average

But Then If You Lied To A Man About His Talent Just Because He Was Sitting Across From You, That Was The Most Unforgivable Lie Of Them All, Because That Was Telling Him To Go On, To Continue Which Was The Worst Way For A Man Without Real Talent To Waste His Life, Finally. But Many People Did Just That, Friends And Relatives Mostly.

The People Are The Biggest Horror Show On Earth, Have Been For Centuries.

Sometimes A Man Doesn’t Know What To Do About Things And Sometimes It’s Best To Lie Very Still And Try Not To Think At All About Anything.

I Was An Agnostic. Agnostics Didn't Have Much To Argue About.

Do Some Living And Get Yourself A Typewriter.

I Think That The World Should Be Full Of Cats And Full Of Rain, That's All, Just Cats And Rain, Rain And Cats, Very Nice, Good Night.

I Was Only Photographing In Words The Reality Of It All.

There Is Enough Treachery , Hatred Violence Absurdity In The Average Human Being To Supply Any Given Army On Any Given Day

I Sit On The Couch Watching Her Arrange Her Long Red Hair Before My Bedroom Mirror. She Pulls Her Hair Up And Piles It On Top Of Her Head- She Lets Her Eyes Look At My Eyes- Then She Drops Her Hair And Lets It Fall Down In Front Of Her Face. We Go To Bed And I Hold Her Speechlessly From The Back My Arm Around Her Neck I Touch Her Wrists And Hands Feel Up To Her Elbows No Further.

I Kept Telling Myself That All The Women In The World Weren´t Whores, Just Mine.

Of Course, There Would Always Be Arguments. That Is The Nature Of Woman. They Like The Mutual Exchange Of Dirty Laundry, A Bit Of Screaming, A Bit Of Dramatics. Then An Exchange Of Vows.

We Are Like Roses That Have Never Bothered To Bloom When We Should Have Bloomed And It Is As If The Sun Has Become Disgusted With Waiting

You Have To Lay Down In The Center Of The Action Lay Down And Wait Until It Charges Then You Must Get Up Face It Get It Before It Gets You The Whole Process Is More Shy Than Vulnerable So Lay Down And Wait Sometimes It's Ten Minutes Sometimes It's Years Sometimes It Never Arrives But You Can't Rush It Push It There's No Way To Cheat Or Get A Jump On It You Have To Lay Down Lay Down And Wait Like An Animal .

Pull A String, A Puppet Moves ... Each Man Must Realize That It Can All Disappear Very Quickly: The Cat, The Woman, The Job, The Front Tire, The Bed, The Walls, The Room; All Our Necessities Including Love, Rest On Foundations Of Sand - And Any Given Cause, No Matter How Unrelated: The Death Of A Boy In Hong Kong Or A Blizzard In Omaha ... Can Serve As Your Undoing. All Your Chinaware Crashing To The Kitchen Floor, Your Girl Will Enter And You'll Be Standing, Drunk, In The Center Of It And She'll Ask: My God, What's The Matter? And You'll Answer: I Don't Know, I Don't Know.

Sometimes I Hate You," She Said.

Things Will Be Far Worse Than They Are Now. And Far Better. I Wait.

If You're Going To Try, Go All The Way. There Is No Other Feeling Like That. You Will Be Alone With The Gods, And The Nights Will Flame With Fire. You Will Ride Life Straight To Perfect Laughter. It's The Only Good Fight There Is.

You've Got To Know When To Let A Woman Go If You Want To Keep Her,and If You Don't Want To Keep Her You Let Her Go Anyhow So It's Always A Process Of Letting Go, One Way Or The Other.

Are You Becoming What You've Always Hated?

And It Seems People Should Not Build Houses Anymore It Seems People Should Stop Working And Sit In Small Rooms On Second Floors Under Electric Lights Without Shades; It Seems There Is A Lot To Forget And A Lot Not To Do And In Drugstores, Markets, Bars, The People Are Tired, They Do Not Want To Move, And I Stand There At Night And Look Through This House And The House Does Not Want To Be Built

Figuring The Average Poet Starts At 16, I Am 23.

The World Had Somehow Gone Too Far, And Spontaneous Kindness Could Never Be So Easy.

It’s The Order Of Things: Each One Gets A Taste Of Honey Then The Knife.

Young Or Old, Good Or Bad, I Don't Think Anything Dies As Slow And As Hard As A Writer.

When I Get Down To My Last Dime I'll Just Walk Over To Skid Row." "there Are Some Real Weirdos Down There." "they're Everywhere.

It Is All Ash And Dry Leaves And Grief Gone Like An Ocean Liner.

I Don't Know If This Is True To You But For Me Sometimes It Gets So Bad That Anything Else Say Like Looking At A Bird On An Overhead Power Line Seems As Great As A Beethoven Symphony. Then You Forget It And You're Back Again.

The History Of Melancholia Includes All Of Us.

Beware Of Those Who Seek Constant Crowds; They Are Nothing Alone.

Some People Like What You Do, Some People Hate What You Do, But Most People Simply Don't Give A Damn.

I Stopped Looking For A Dream Girl, I Just Wanted One That Wasn't A Nightmare.

We Drove On And On, Past Little Villages And Both Good Things And Bad Things Were Happening To The People In Those Villages Too, But I Still Was Nothing But Arms And Ears And Eyes And Maybe There'd Be Either Some Good Luck For Me Or More Death Tomorrow.

Human Relationships Didn't Work Anyhow. Only The First Two Weeks Had Any Zing, Then The Participants Lost Their Interest. Masks Dropped Away And Real People Began To Appear: Cranks, Imbeciles, The Demented, The Vengeful, Sadists, Killers. Modern Society Had Created Its Own Kind And They Feasted On Each Other. It Was A Duel To The Death--in A Cesspool.

Sweet Christ, You Must Know That A Man Will Go Further For Any Poem Than For Any Woman Ever Born.

Life's As Kind As You Let It Be.

I Can't Think Of Any Poet-recluses Outside Of One Dead Jeffers. [robinson Jeffers] The Rest Of Them Want To Slobber Over Each Other And Hug Each Other. It Appears To Me That I Am The Last Of The Poet-recluses.

Can You Remember Who You Were, Before The World Told You Who You Should Be?

T Was Almost Disappointing Because It Seemed When Stress And Madness Were Eliminated From My Daily Life There Wasn't Much Left You Could Depend On.

They Laughed. Things Were Funny. They Weren't Afraid To Care. There Was No Sense To Life, To The Structure Of Things.

There Is Moss On The Walls And The Stain Of Thought And Failure And Waiting

Art Is Its Own Excuse, And It's Either Art Or It's Something Else. It's Either A Poem Or A Piece Of Cheese.

I'll Get Back To The Whores And The Horses And The Booze, While There's Time.

And If There Is Anybody Out There Who Is Crazy Enough To Want To Become A Writer, I'd Say Go Ahead, Spit In The Eye Of The Sun, Hit Those Keys, It's The Best Madness Going, The Centuries Need Help, The Species Cry For Light And Gamble And Laughter. Give It To Them. There Are Enough Words For All Of Us.

Stay With The Beer. Beer Is Continuous Blood. A Continuous Lover.

Homosexuals Are Delicate And Bad Poetry Is Delicate And [allen] Ginsberg Turned The Tables By Making Homosexual Poetry Strong Poetry, Almost Manly Poetry; But In The Long Run, The Homo Will Remain The Homo And Not The Poet.

I Remember When Each 4th Lot Was Vacant And Overgrown, And The Landlord Only Go This Rent When You Had It, And Each Day Was Clear And Good And Each Moment Was Full Of Promise.

Well, Death Says, As He Walks By, I'm Going To Get You Anyhow No Matter What You've Been: Writer, Cab-driver, Pimp, Butcher, Sky-diver, I'm Going To Get You

And I Said To Myself That He Was The First Thing That I Had Ever Missed In My Life.

Her Violence Frightened Me. She Always Claimed That I Was The Jealous One, And I Was Often Jealous, But When I Saw Things Working Against Me I Simply Became Disgusted And Withdrew. Lydia Was Different. She Reacted. She Was The Head Cheerleader At The Game Of Violence.

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.

Never Envy A Man His Lady. Behind It All Lays A Living Hell.

Drinking Is An Emotional Thing. It Joggles You Out Of The Standardism Of Everyday Life, Out Of Everything Being The Same.

I Only Want Sweet Peace And Kindliness When I Awaken -- But There's Always Some Finger Pointing, Telling Me Some Terrible Deed I Committed During The Night. It Seems I Make A Lot Of Mistakes And It Seems That I Am Not Allowed Any.

They Never Pay The Slaves Enough So They Can Get Free, Just Enough So They Can Stay Alive And Come Back To Work.

It's 4:30 In The Morning, It's Always 4:30 In The Morning.

We Use Such Big Words To Move Nowhere.

It’s Never Quite Right, All The Things We Are Taught, All The Loves We Chase, All The Deaths We Die, All The Lives We Live.

There Is Nothing That Teaches You More Than Regrouping After Failure And Moving On.

Love Is Kind Of Like When You See A Fog In The Morning, When You Wake Up Before The Sun Comes Out. It's Just A Little While, And Then It Burns Away... Love Is A Fog That Burns With The First Daylight Of Reality.

But My Whole Life Has Been A Matter Of Fighting For One Simple Hour To Do What I Want To Do. There Was Always Something Getting In The Way Of My Getting To Myself.

What Were You Going To Do Tonight?" "i Was Going To Listen To The Songs Of Rachmaninoff." "who's That?" "a Dead Russian.

Drinking Is Another Way Of Thinking, Another Way Of Living. It Gives You Two Lives Instead Of One.

Beauty Is Nothing, Beauty Won’t Stay. You Don’t Know How Lucky You Are To Be Ugly, Because If People Like You, You Know It’s For Something Else.

Love Is A Form Of Prejudice. I Have Too Many Other Prejudices.

It's Hot Tonight And Half The Neighborhood Is Drunk. The Other Half Is Dead. If I Have Any Advice About Writing Poetry It's - Don't. I'm Going To Send Out For Some Fried Chicken.

I Am This Fiery Snail Crawling Home.

We Are Born Like This Into This Into These Carefully Mad Wars Into The Sight Of Broken Factory Windows Of Emptiness Into Bars Where People No Longer Speak To Each Other Into Fist Fights That End As Shootings And Knifings Born Into This Into Hospitals Which Are So Expensive That It’s Cheaper To Die Into Lawyers Who Charge So Much It’s Cheaper To Plead Guilty Into A Country Where The Jails Are Full And The Madhouses Closed Into A Place Where The Masses Elevate Fools Into Rich Heroes

All That I Know Is That I Believe In The Sound Of Music And The Running Of A Horse. All Else Is Squabble.

More Often Than Not Democratic Law Works To The Advantage Of The Few Even Though The Many Have Voted; This, Of Course, Is Because The Few Have Told Them How To Vote.

I Am Ashamed To Be A Member Of The Human Race But I Don't Want To Add Any More To That Shame, I Want To Scrape A Little Of It Off.

We Don’t Even Ask Happiness, Just A Little Less Pain.

I Was Their Bar Freak, They Needed Me To Make Themselves Feel Better. Just Like, At Times, I Needed That Graveyard.

My Beerdrunk Soul Is Sadder Than All The Dead Christmas Trees Of The World.

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.

The Role Of The Poet Is Almost Nothing...drearily Nothing. And When He Steps Outside Of His Boots And Tries To Get Tough As Our Dear Ezra [pound] Did, He Will Get His Pink Little Ass Slapped.

Morals Were Restrictive, But They Were Grounded On Human Experience.

Human Experience

I Often Carry Things To Read So That I Will Not Have To Look At The People.

It’s Hard To Drink When You Dance. And It’s Hard To Dance When You Drink.

There's No Clarity. There Was Never Meant To Be Clarity.

I Was In Love Again. I Was In Trouble

That's How It Is With Books, Isn't It: They're Not In A Hurry. They'll Wait For You Till You're Ready. People Empty Me. I Have To Go Away To Refill.

God Is A Lonely Place Without Steak.

That's The Way It Ends. The Thin Edge Of The Wedge.

I Went To The Worst Of Bars Hoping To Get Killed But All I Could Do Was To Get Drunk Again.

The Whole World Is Caught In Her Glance And At Last The Universe Is Magnificent.

When I Begin To Doubt My Ability To Work The Word, I Simply Read Another Writer And Know I Have Nothing To Worry About. My Contest Is Only With Myself, To Do It Right, With Power, And Force, And Delight, And Gamble.

Oh, I Don’t Mean You’re Handsome, Not The Way People Think Of Handsome. Your Face Seems Kind. But Your Eyes - They’re Beautiful. They’re Wild, Crazy, Like Some Animal Peering Out Of A Forest On Fire.

Love Is A Fog That Burns With The First Daylight Of Reality.

The Trouble With A Mask Is It Never Changes

I Had No Feeling For The Things So Many Others Needed.

Bad Luck For The Young Poet Would Be A Rich Father, An Early Marriage, An Early Success Or The Ability To Do Anything Well.

Great Books Are The Ones We Need

As We Live We All Get Caught And Torn By Various Traps. Nobody Escapes Them. Some Even Live With Them. The Idea Is To Realize That A Trap Is A Trap. If You Are In One And You Don't Realize It, Then You're Finished.

You've Got To Burn Straight Up And Down And Then Maybe Sidewise For A While And Have Your Guts Scrambled By A Bully And The Demonic Ladies, You've Got To Run Along The Edge Of Madness Teetering, You've Got To Starve Like A Winter Alleycat, You've Go To Live With The Imbecility Of At Least A Dozen Cities, Then Maybe Maybe Maybe You Might Know Where You Are For A Tiny Blinking Moment.

It's Good To Have Things Done With When They Don't Work It's Also Good Not To Hate Or Even Forget The Person You've Failed With.

Four Days Alone With Nothing. Emerge Empowered. The First Human Face You See Will Knock You Back 50%.

It's Better To Be Happy...if You Can..!!

Places To Hunt Places To Hide Are Getting Harder To Find, And Pet Canaries And Goldfish Too, Did You Notice That?

What Good Are You? What Can You Do? It Has Cost Me A Thousands Of Dollars To Raise You, Feed You, Clothe You! Suppose I Left You Here On The Street? Then What Would You Do?" "catch Butterflies

2 P.m. Beer Nothing Matters But Flopping On A Mattress With Cheap Dreams And A Beer As The Leaves Die And The Horses Die And The Landladies Stare In The Halls; Brisk The Music Of Pulled Shades, A Last Man's Cave In An Eternity Of Swarm And Explosion; Nothing But The Dripping Sink, The Empty Bottle, Euphoria, Youth Fenced In, Stabbed And Shaven, Taught Words Propped Up To Die.

Dogs And Angels Are Not Very Far Apart

In My Next Life I Want To Be A Cat. To Sleep 20 Hours A Day And Wait To Be Fed. To Sit Around Licking My Ass.

I Suppose Like Others I Have Come Through Fire And Sword, Love Gone Wrong, Head-on Crashes, Drunk At Sea, And I Have Listened To The Simple Sound Of Water Running In Tubs And Wished To Drown

Genius Might Be The Ability To Say A Profound Thing In A Simple Way.

I Mean, Say That You Figure That Everything Is Senseless, Then It Can't Be Quite Senseless Because You Are Aware That It's Senseless And Your Awareness Of Senselessness Almost Gives It Sense. You Know What I Mean?

Escape From The Black Widow Spider Is A Miracle As Great As Art. What A Web She Can Weave Slowly Drawing You To Her She'll Embrace You Then When She's Satisfied She'll Kill You Still In Her Embrace And Suck The Blood From You.

Pain Is Absurd Because It Exists, Nothing More.

The Male, For All His Bravado And Exploration, Is The Loyal One, The One Who Generally Feels Love. The Female Is Skilled At Betrayal And Torture And Damnation.

The Problem Was You Had To Keep Choosing Between One Evil Or Another, And No Matter What You Chose, They Sliced A Little Bit More Off You, Until There Was Nothing Left.

No Matter How Little A Man Has He Will Find That He Will Always Settle For Less.

This Is Very Important -- To Take Leisure Time. Pace Is The Essence. Without Stopping Entirely And Doing Nothing At All For Great Periods, You're Gonna Lose Everything...just To Do Nothing At All, Very, Very Important. And How Many People Do This In Modern Society? Very Few. That's Why They're All Totally Mad, Frustrated, Angry And Hateful.

And Then There Are Some Who Believe That Old Relationships Can Be Revived And Made New Again. But Please If You Feel That Way Don't Phone Don't Write Don't Arrive

If I Never See You Again I Will Always Carry You Inside Outside On My Fingertips And At Brain Edges And In Centers Centers Of What I Am Of What Remains.

How Can You Be True And Kind At The Same Time? How?

I Loved You Like A Man Loves A Woman He Never Touches, Only Writes To, Keeps Little Photographs Of.

There Will Always Be Something To Ruin Our Lives, It All Depends On What Or Which Finds Us First. We Are Always Ripe And Ready To Be Taken.

It Was Sad, It Was Sad, It Was Sad. When Betty Came Back We Didn't Sing Or Laugh, Or Even Argue. We Sat Drinking In The Dark, Smoking Cigarettes, And When We Went To Sleep, I Didn't Put My Feet On Her Body Or She On Mine Like We Used To. We Slept Without Touching. We Had Both Been Robbed.

It Was Like A Church In There As Only The Truly Lost Sit In Bars On Tuesday Mornings At 8:00 A.m.

The Difference Between A Brave Man And A Coward Is A Coward Thinks Twice Before Jumping In The Cage With A Lion. The Brave Man Doesn't Know What A Lion Is. He Just Thinks He Does.

As The Spirit Wanes The Form Appears

What's Genius? I Don't Know But I Do Know That The Difference Between A Madman And A Professional Is That A Pro Does As Well As He Can Within What He Has Set Out To Do And A Madman Does Exceptionally Well At What He Can't Help Doing.

The Sea Is Made Of Blood

They Have No Idea That It Can Be Done By A Bus Driver, A Field Hand, Or A Fry Cook. They Have No Idea Where It Comes From. It Comes From Pain, Damnation And Impossibility. The Blow To The Soul Of The Gut. It Comes From Getting Burned And Seared And Slugged. It Comes From...new And Awful Places And The Same Old Places.

We’ve Died So Many Times Now That We Can Only Wonder Why We Still Care.

Human Relationships Simply Aren't Durable. I Think Back To The Women In My Life. They Seem Non-existent.

I Enjoy The Bad Things That Are Said About Me. It Enhances Sales And Makes Me Feel Evil. I Don't Like To Feel Good 'cause I Am Good. But Evil? Yes. It Gives Me Another Dimension.

The Street To My Left Was Backed Up With Traffic And I Watched The People Waiting Patiently In The Cars. There Was Almost Always A Man And A Women, Staring Straight Ahead, Not Talking. It Was, Finally, For Everyone, A Matter Of Waiting. You Waited And You Waited- For The Hospital, The Doctor, The Plumber, The Madhouse, The Jail, Papa Death Himself. First The Signal Red, Then The Signal Was Green. The Citizens Of The World Ate Food And Watched T.v. And Worried About Their Jobs Or Lack Of The Same, While They Waited.

I Don't Think I'll Travel Anymore. Travel Is Nothing But An Inconvenience. There Is Always Enough Trouble Where You Are.

It Was A Joy! Words Weren't Dull, Words Were Things That Could Make Your Mind Hum. If You Read Them And Let Yourself Feel The Magic, You Could Live Without Pain, With Hope, No Matter What Happened To You.

The Secret Is Writing Down One Simple Line After Another.

For Those Who Believe In God, Most Of The Big Questions Are Answered. But For Those Of Us Who Can't Readily Accept The God Formula, The Big Answers Don't Remain Stonewritten. We Adjust To New Conditions And Discoveries. We Are Pliable. Love Need Not Be A Command Nor Faith A Dictum. I Am My Own God. We Are Here To Unlearn The Teachings Of The Church, State And Our Educational System. We Are Here To Drink Beer. We Are Here To Kill War. We Are Here To Laugh At The Odds And Live Our Lives So Well That Death Will Tremble To Take Us.

Bullfighting Can Be An Art Boxing Can Be An Art Loving Can Be An Art Opening A Can Of Sardines Can Be An Art

That’s When I First Learned That It Wasn’t Enough To Just Do Your Job, You Had To Have An Interest In It, Even A Passion For It.

Success Is Always Dangerous. It Can Make An Asshole Out Of Anybody.

To Me, Nudity Is A Joke. I Don't Think Nude People Are Very Attractive At All. I Like My Women Fully Clothed. I Like To Imagine What Might Be Under There. It Might Not Be The Standard Thing. Imagine, Stripping A Woman Down, And She Has A Body Like A Little Submarine. With Periscope, Propellers, Torpedoes. That Would Be The One For Me. I'd Marry Her Right Off And Be Faithful To The End.

If There Are Junk Yards In Hell, Love Is The Dog That Guards The Gates.

I Like To Change Liquor Stores Frequently Because The Clerks Got To Know Your Habits If You Went In Night And Day And Bought Huge Quantities. I Could Feel Them Wondering Why I Wasn't Dead Yet And It Made Me Uncomfortable. They Probably Weren't Thinking Any Such Thing, But Then A Man Gets Paranoid When He Has 300 Hangovers A Year.

I Am Aware That A Computer Can’t Create A Poem, But Neither Can A Typewriter.

They Simply Never Understand, Do They, That Sometimes Solitude Is One Of The Most Beautiful Things On Earth?

I Drive Around The Streets An Inch Away From Weeping, Ashamed Of My Sentimentality And Possible Love.

It Seemed To Me That I Had Never Met Another Person On Earth As Discouraging To My Happiness As My Father. And It Appeared That I Had The Same Effect Upon Him.

My Mother, Poor Fish, Wanting To Be Happy, Beaten Two Or Three Times A Week, Telling Me To Be Happy: "henry, Smile! Why Don't You Ever Smile?" And Then She Would Smile, To Show Me How, And It Was The Saddest Smile I Ever Saw

People Who Believe In Politics Are Like People Who Believe In God: They Are Sucking Wind Through Bent Straws.

I Never Understood Society. I Undersand That It Works Somehow And That It Functions As A Reality And That Its Realities Are Necessary To Keep Us From Worse Realities. But All I Sense Are That Are Plenty Of Police And Jails And Judges And Laws And That What Is Meant To Protect Me Is Breaking Me Down.

I Have Been Treated Better Than I Should Have Been---not By Life In General Nor By The Machinery Of Things But By Women.

That's What Friendship Means: Sharing The Prejudice Of Experience.

When A Hot Woman Meets A Hermit One Of Them Is Going To Change.

Eleven Months. Now She's Gone Gone As They Go.

Writing About A Writer's Block Is Better Than Not Writing At All

It Was Like Any Other Relationship, There Was Jealousy On Both Sides, There Were Split-ups And Reconciliations. There Were Also Fragmented Moments Of Great Peace And Beauty. I Often Tried To Get Away From Her And She Tried To Get Away From Me But It Was Difficult: Cupid, In His Strange Way, Was Really There.

Beware The Average Man The Average Woman Beware Their Love, Their Love Is Average Seeks Average But There Is Genius In Their Hatred There Is Enough Genius In Their Hatred To Kill You To Kill Anybody Not Wanting Solitude Not Understanding Solitude They Will Attempt To Destroy Anything That Differs From Their Own Not Being Able To Create Art They Will Not Understand Art They Will Consider Their Failure As Creators Only As A Failure Of The World

Those Who Escape Hell However Never Talk About It And Nothing Much Bothers Them After That

I Often Stood In Front Of The Mirror Alone, Wondering How Ugly A Person Could Get.

It’s Nice Enough To Make A Man Weep, But I Don’t Weep, Do You?

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.

Sometimes There's Luck, When There Is You Stock Up On It And Wait For The Other Times

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.

There's A Small Balcony Here, The Door Is Open And I Can See The Lights Of The Cars On The Harbor Freeway South, They Never Stop, That Roll Of Lights, On And On. All Those People. What Are They Doing? What Are They Thinking? We're All Going To Die, All Of Us, What A Circus! That Alone Should Make Us Love Each Other But It Doesn't.

I'm Only Interested In Poetry.

I've Never Met Another Man I'd Rather Be.

The Pest, In A Sense, Is A Very Superior Being To Us: He Knows Where To Find Us And How--usually In The Bath Or In Sexual Intercourse Or Asleep.

I Remembered My New Orleans Days, Living On Two Five-cent Candy Bars A Day For Weeks At A Time In Order To Have Leisure To Write. But Starvation, Unfortunately, Didn't Improve Art. It Only Hindered It. A Man's Soul Was Rooted In His Stomach. A Man Could Write Much Better After Eating A Porterhouse Steak And Drinking A Pint Of Whiskey Than He Could Ever Write After Eating A Nickel Candy Bar. The Myth Of The Starving Artist Was A Hoax.

The Crazy Ones Only Laugh When There Is No Reason To Laugh.

Love Is A Form Of Prejudice. You Love What You Need, You Love What Makes You Feel Good, You Love What Is Convenient. How Can You Say You Love One Person When There Are Ten Thousand People In The World That You Would Love More If You Ever Met Them? But You'll Never Meet Them.

If You're Going To Try, Go All The Way. This Could Mean Losing Girlfriends, Wives, Relatives, Jobs And Maybe Your Mind.

What A Woman Wants Is A Reaction. What A Man Wants Is A Woman.

Finally There Is Nothing Here For Death To Take Away.

It Was Better For Me When I Could Imagine Greatness In Others, Even If It Wasn't Always There.

I've Found Out Why Men Sign Their Names To Their Works- Not That They Created Them But More Than The Others Did Not.

I'm Going, She Said. I Love You But You're Crazy, You're Doomed.

Once In A Dream I Saw A Snake Swallowing Its Own Tail, It Swallowed And Swallowed Until It Got Halfway Round, And There It Stopped And There It Stayed, It Was Stuffed With Its Own Self. Some Fix, That. We Only Have Ourselves To Go On, And It's Enough.

Long Ago, Among Other Lies They Were Taught That Silence Was Bravery.

I'll Use The Knives For Spreading Jam, And The Gas To Warm My Greying Love.

I Wasn't Sleeping On The Streets At Night. Of Course, There Were A Lot Of Good People Sleeping In The Streets. They Weren't Fools, They Just Didn't Fit Into The Needed Machinery Of The Moment. And Those Needs Kept Altering.

Intellectuals Say Simple Things In Difficult Ways. Artists Say Difficult Things In Simple Ways.

Love Breaks My Bones And I Laugh

With Me, My Main Vision For Life Was To Avoid As Many People As Possible. The Less People I Saw The Better I Felt.

Yes, Wagner And The Storm Intermix With The Wine As Nights Like This Run Up My Wrists And Up Into My Head And Back Down Into The Gut

Trending Author

David Copperfield

Category