Charles Bukowski: Likeness (page 3)

“like the fox
I run with the hunted
and if I’m not
the happiest man
on earth
I’m surely the
luckiest man
alive.”

“I am not like
other people.
I am
burning in hell. the hell of
myself.”

“I feel no grief for being called something
which
I am not;
in fact, it's enthralling, somehow, like a good
back rub”

“I just let it roll. Like a hot turd down a hill.”

“don't be ashamed of
anything; I guess God meant it all
like
locks on
doors.”

“if you think they didn't go crazy
in tiny rooms just like you're doing now without women without food without hope then you're not ready.”

“My flesh looked like it wasn't trying. It looked like it hated being part of me.”

“I like the way Mahler wandered about in his music and still retained his
passion. He must have looked like an
earthquake walking down the street.”

“bad writing's like bad women: there's just not much you can do about it”

“I was glad I wasn’t in love, that I wasn’t happy with the world. I like being at odds with everything. People in love often become edgy, dangerous. They lose their sense of perspective.”

“our bones
like stems into the sky
will forever cry
victory”

“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.”

“He had long nostril hairs, powerfully intimidating, like an unscheduled nightmare.”

“I felt like crying but nothing came out. it was just a sort of sad sickness, sick sad, when you can’t feel any worse. I think you know it. I think everybody knows it now and then. but I think I have known it pretty often, too often.”

“God knows I am not too hippy. Perhaps because I am too much around the hip and I fear fads for, like anybody else, I like something that tends to last.”

“Your writing", she said to me, "it's so raw. It's like a sledgehammer, and yet it has humor and tenderness….”

“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”

“terror finally becomes almost
bearable
but never quite

terror creeps like a cat
crawls like a cat
across my mind”

“It was only the matter of a new voice. Nobody listened to an old voice anymore. Old voices became a part of one's self, like a fingernail.”