Favorite line from Buk? (2 Viewers)

[Hugh Rodenski]

i'm not sure if someone posted this before me, i didn't check... but my favorite line from his is the last part of yes yes.

(talking about god)

"He made some mistakes
but when He created you lying in bed
He came all over His Blessed Universe."

gets me every time!

 

[gbsupbowl]

age is no crime
but the shame
of a deliberately
wasted life
among so many
deliberately
wasted
lives
is

 

[Antn.migraine]

In Spanish: "Siempre habrá dinero y putas y borrachos"

"El amor es para la gente real."
"Me da igual lo que hagan conmigo cuando muera; pueden quemarme, pueden hacerme rebanadas, pueden dar mis pelotas a la ciencia, no me importa."

 

[HevyMinik]

"Not much chance, completely cut loose from purpose" from Nirvana

 

[Rekrab]

Going from memory here, and I don't know what book it's from, but one of Bukowski's female characters, a wife or girl friend, asks something like "Is my ass on straight?" I love that line. Anyone know the actual line?

 

[hank solo]

Here you go David - from 'Love is a dog from Hell' (and 'Scarlet') - red up and down

red hair
real
she whirled it
and she asked
"is my ass still on?"

such comedy.

there is always one woman
to save you from another

 

[Rekrab]

Thank you, hank solo! I guess I made up that "on straight" part. I need to reread those "Scarlet" poems. If I recall, there were several, all great stuff.

 

[LiL'redhairgirl]

"Love dries up. Even faster than sperm."
from The end of a short affair

;)
http://victorian.fortunecity.com/cloisters/90/bukowski/short_affair.html

 

[niceguy]

Someone once asked Bukowski: What is Fiction?
His reply: An improvement on life

 

[hillarymiddleton]

It could be a general quote, part of a book, stanza in a poem. My favorite is a quote is:

"Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I'm not going to make it, but you laugh inside- remembering all the time you felt that way."

What's yours?

 

[Lindo]

From "To the whore who took my poems" :

"Take my left arm or a fifty, but not my poems..."

 

[jcru38]

"What was wrong was never understood and what was right never lasted."

"Ride life straight to perfect laughter, It's the only good fight there is."

"My heart is a thousand years old. I am not like other people." these are a select few amongst so so so many others

 

[Austin Charles]

That line, "I'am a genius, but nobody knows it but me." I think from Factotum. This pretty much encapsulates the entire Buk experience for me. Not only do I feel this way about my own writing, I feel this way about Buk. I have written a line in a novel of mine that I think might apply to Buk, it goes, "Am I really a genius? Or are they all just fools?" I don't know. I have published poetry, a short story and all, but I don't feel like I know what I'm doing sometimes, and I just go with it. That's what I think Buk meant at least. But he might be genius. And maybe I'm just a fool. In my lifetime, I'am certain I'm just a fool. Until I get famous :)

 

[Kellieo]

Love is a Dog from Hell
Page 111
462-0614

"When the phone rings
I too would like to hear words
that might ease
some of this."

 

[J.R. Helton]

"There is nothing that teaches you more than regrouping after failure and moving on. Yet most people are stricken with fear. They fear failure so much that they fail."

The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship

 

[Rachael]

Not really a line, but I think this passage from "Ham On Rye" describes how I felt when I first discovered Bukowski, and it's always stayed with me:

"I opened the book at random and began reading. It was about a man at a piano. How false it seemed at first. But I kept reading. The man at the piano was troubled. His mind was saying things. Dark and curious things. The lines on the page were pulled tight, like a man screaming, but not "Joe, where are you?" More like, Joe, where is anything? This Lawrence of the tight and bloody line. I had never been told about him. Why the secret? Why wasn't he advertised?"

 

[esart]

Another fav of mine is from The Crunch:

the beads will swing
the clouds will cloud
and the killer will behead the child
like taking a bite out of an ice cream cone.

 

[Vicenzo]

From yes yes​

​

when He created you lying in bed
He knew what He was doing
He was drunk and He was high
and He created the mountains and the sea and fire​

at the same time​

​

Burning in Water Drowning in Flame

Love that line so much.

 

[AMadmanwithaBox]

about the PEN conference​

​

take a writer away from his typewriter​

and all you have left​

is​

the sickness​

which started him​

typing​

in the​

beginning.​

'You Get So Alone At Times That It Just Makes Sense'​

 

[AMadmanwithaBox]

From let it enfold you

I was living a hell in​

small rooms, I broke​

things, smashed things,​

walked through glass,​

cursed.​

I challenged everything,​

was continually being​

evicted, jailed, in and​

out of fights, in and out​

of my mind.​

​

'Betting on the Muse'

 

[DavidK]

being lost,
being crazy maybe
is not so bad
if you can be
that way
undisturbed.

(From 'Young in New Orleans')

 

[PhillyDave]

"Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead."
"The best of you I like more than you think." and "Don't try"

 

[Saucestin]

The less I needed, the better I felt.

 

[Saucestin]

Also, I really like this passage from Ham on Rye:

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.

 

[Otto jr]

"Before a man can ever meet the gods he must learn to forgive the drunks."

 

[Lindo]

From an interview :

The further away I am from the human race, the better I feel :
Two inches is great,
Two miles is great,
Two thousand miles is beautiful.

 

[Steven Lloyd]

If what a writer wrote was published and sold many, many copies, the writer thought he was great. If what a writer wrote was published and sold a medium number of copies, the writer thought he was great. If what a writer wrote was published and sold very few copies, the writer thought he was great. If what the writer wrote never was published and he didn't have the money to publish it himself, then he thought he was truly great. The truth, however, was that there was very little greatness. It was almost nonexistent, invisible. But you could be sure that the worst writer had the most confidence, the least self-doubt.

--Charles Bukowski

 

[mjp]

Yes, that applies to every creative field (and most workplaces), not just writing.

 

[Jordo]

Conclusion of Women

I walked into the kitchen, opened a bottle of vitamin E, 400 I.U. each, and downed several with half a glass of Perrier water. It was going to be a good night for Chinaski. The sun was slanting down through the venetian blinds, making a familiar pattern on the carpet, and the white wine was chilling in the refrigerator.
I opened the door and walked out on the porch. There was a strange cat out there. He was a huge creature, a tom, with a shining black coat and luminous yellow eyes. He wasn't frightened of me. He walked up purring and rubbed against one of my legs. I was a good guy and he knew it. Animals knew things like that. They had an instinct. I walked back inside and he followed me.
I opened him up a can of Star-Kist solid white tuna. Packed in spring water. Net wt. 7 oz.

I love his work, but that's the worst ending ever. He seems to always end on a weak metaphor ("look, a tom cat -- like me!"; "the toy boxer fell on his ass -- like me!".

I'm looking forward to reading/watching some bio's; I get the sense he hated ending novels. He just decided he was done and ended it.

Some of his endings beg for a rim shot...

The other theme I see is the "oroborus" -- a perfect circle of self-destruction. Barfly (and maybe Post Office?) ends like that -- right where it began, with Chinaski's head chomping his own ass.

Oh yeah... best line, IMO, thus far is the very first line in Post Office: "It began as a mistake."

That says it all.

 

[growing beard]

"to get the word down proper, that takes courage, seeing the form, living the life, and getting it into the line"

high five to anyone who knows where it's from, but i'll post the answer tmrw night if i still remember :rollfool:

 

[nado]

GB,
It's from Upon the Mathematics of the Breath and the Way published in the Small Press Review, 1973.
You can read it here.

 

[growing beard]

yessir! also published in portions of a wine stained notebook, aka the collection that david built.

second keeper line for those who don't have time to click nado's link:

"Hemingway studied the bullfights for form and meaning and courage and failure and the way."

man. makes me wonder what I study, and why ...

 

[Danny Mac]

One I remember off the top of my head and will always remember is...

I Love that Bird
The simple needing of seed
So clear

 

[miyavi]

During my early schooldays I was an underdog from day one and not treated very well by older classmates. at the worst moment during household arts class my bullies put me completely in a front-loading washer. that happened 30 years ago but I still have to choke while reading the first lines of me against the world (Betting On The Muse):

when I was a kid
one of the questions asked was,
would you rather eat a bucket of shit
or drink a bucket of piss?
I thought that was easy.
"that's easy," I said, "I'll take the
piss."
"maybe we'll make you do both,"
they told me.

 

[GDPR 4124]

You can't beat death but
you can beat death in life,
sometimes.

 

[gbsupbowl]

"we cure the obvious and the subtle takes over, and if it's subtle enough some grow fat and happy and others grow mad."

 

[Digney in Burnaby]

"The best thing is to be alone but not quite alone." From The Captain.... Can't be confident that book wasn't given the once over by the editor but I wrote the line down in a note book so it obviously meant something at that point (not that long ago) and, again, right now.

 

[standing]

I'm tired of being great. I'm tired of waiting to die. Let's go out.

 

[Danny Mac]

I have to add another vote to...

"I was born to hustle roses down the avenues of the dead."

What an immortal line!

 

[zobraks]

One of my favo(u)rites, when he describes an old woman in a hotel:

She had unbelievably beautiful eyes, as if all that had remained of her had gone to the eyes and just waited there for the end.

(from "I Meet the Master", Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook, page 209)