"Laureate of American lowlife”
Called "laureate of American lowlife,” “the original Big Lebowski,” “pulp-fiction hero,” and “king of the underground;” Bukowski wrote over 60 books, thousands of poems, hundreds of short stories, and was the writer behind Robert Crumb’s famous comics. Icon of the Los Angeles cultural life of his time, lover of alcohol, affairs, and outrageous creativity; he became the epitome and symbol of the anti-social, utterly free, and uninhibited bachelor. An intensely captivating and mesmerizing figure, his life and story show up in film personalities including Jean-Luc Godard, Ben Gazzara, Mickey Rourke, Faye Dunaway, Sean Penn, Dennis Hopper, Bono, Tom Waits, Julianne Moore, Jeff Bridges, Matt Dillon, and many more.
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Artists Central European Poets Trickster
Tales of Ordinary Madness
“You don't try. That's very important: not to try, either for Cadillacs, creation or immortality. You wait, and if nothing happens, you wait some more.”
Chapters:
57. Wu Wei
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“Goodness can be found sometimes in the middle of hell.”
from Women
Chapters:
40. Returning
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“You begin saving the world by saving one person at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.”
from Women
Chapters:
67. Three Treasures
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“Everything is beautiful. We have all this beauty in the world and all we have to do is reach out and touch it, it is all there…”
from Women
Chapters:
25. The Mother of All Things
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“The free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it - basically because you feel good, very good, when you are near or with them.”
from Tales of Ordinary Madness
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“It was true that I didn't have much ambition, but there ought to be a place for people without ambition... How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?”
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“The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.”
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“People empty me. I have to get away to refill.”
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“The captain of a low-life odyssey, Bukowski accomplished something rare: he produced a large, completely distinctive, widely beloved body of work... Even at his most unheroic, he is the hero of his stories and poems, always demanding the reader’s covert approval. That is why he is so easy to love, especially for novice readers with little experience of the genuine challenges of poetry; and why, for more demanding readers, he remains so hard to admire.”
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