“It seems I make a lot of mistakes and it seems that I am not allowed any.”
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Charles Bukowski 555
American writer 1920–1994Related quotes
“we’re allowed to make a lot of mistakes in our lives, except the mistake that destroy us”
Source: Veronika Decides to Die
“Make no mistake, this only seems”
Space Chantey (1968)
Context: p>His soaring vaunt escaped the blooming ears of us,
He's gone, he's dead, he's dirt, he disappears from us! Be this the death of highest thrust of human all?
The flaming end of bright and shining crewmen all?Destroyed? His road is run? It's but a bend of it;
Make no mistake, this only seems</p
“It seems as if I am making a comeback but I have never really been away.”
Interview for Melody Maker http://justbackdated.blogspot.com/2014/06/cat-stevens-1970-interview.html with Chris Charlesworth (July 1970)
Context: It seems as if I am making a comeback but I have never really been away. It’s very strange because the whole attitude changes and everything is turned inside out. Now I am seeing the shiny side again. <!--
It has made all the difference to me because I had to have that break.
“I don't think that there are any limits to how excellent we could make life seem.”
Source: Everything Is Illuminated
from "Oxford Road Show", BBC2 (March 1985)
In interviews etc., About himself and his work
Source: The Machine's Child (2006), Chapter 18, “In the Dark Night of the Soul (Year Indeterminate)” (pp. 173-174)
Context: Now then, Nick, wilt thou not sleep?
Nicholas glanced up from the plaquette on which he had been studying the Pali canon of Buddha’s teachings. He sighed and set it aside...
You don’t look like revelation has struck you, somehow.
No, Spirit.
This ain’t any better than the Tao?
No.
Nor the Bhagavad Gita? Nor the Avesta, neither?
No.
I thought certain you’d like them Gnostic Gospels.
Nicholas shrugged.
And I reckon you ain’t even looked at that nice book on Vodou.
Spirit, this is futility. What do the best of them but recapitulate the Ten Commandments, in one form or another? And I find no proof that men have obeyed strange gods any better than the God of the Israelites, or learned any more of the true nature of the Almighty. Shall I worship a cow? Shall I spin paper prayers on a wheel? I’d as lief go back to eating fish in Lent lest God smite me down, or pray to wooden Mary to take away the toothache.
Well, son, allowing for the foolishness, which I reckon depends on what port you hail from—ain’t there any one seems better than the rest?
None, Spirit. That I must be kind and do no harm, I needed no prophets to tell me; but not one will open his dead mouth to say what kind and harmless Lord would create this dreadful world, said Nicholas...
What do I tell my boy, then, if he gets the shakes about eternal life?
Set up no gods for thine Alec, Spirit. Nicholas lay back and put his arms about Mendoza, pulling her close. There is love, or there is nothing. The rest is vanity.