Isabel > Isabel's Quotes

“A book is a loaded gun in the house next door...Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man?”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“Art and love are the same thing: It’s the process of seeing yourself in things that are not you.”
― Chuck Klosterman, Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story

“Cherish your wilderness.”
― Maxine Kumin

“I've never been lonely. I've been in a room -- I've felt suicidal. I've been depressed. I've felt awful -- awful beyond all -- but I never felt that one other person could enter that room and cure what was bothering me...or that any number of people could enter that room. In other words, loneliness is something I've never been bothered with because I've always had this terrible itch for solitude. It's being at a party, or at a stadium full of people cheering for something, that I might feel loneliness. I'll quote Ibsen, "The strongest men are the most alone." I've never thought, "Well, some beautiful blonde will come in here and give me a fuck-job, rub my balls, and I'll feel good." No, that won't help. You know the typical crowd, "Wow, it's Friday night, what are you going to do? Just sit there?" Well, yeah. Because there's nothing out there. It's stupidity. Stupid people mingling with stupid people. Let them stupidify themselves. I've never been bothered with the need to rush out into the night. I hid in bars, because I didn't want to hide in factories. That's all. Sorry for all the millions, but I've never been lonely. I like myself. I'm the best form of entertainment I have. Let's drink more wine!”
― Charles Bukowski

“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.”
― Charles Bukowski

“I read a book one day and my whole life was changed.”
― Orhan Pamuk, The New Life

“It was true that I didn’t have much ambition, but there ought to be a place for people without ambition, I mean a better place than the one usually reserved. 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?”
― Charles Bukowski, Factotum

“Love is all right for those who can handle the psychic overload. It's like trying to carry a full garbage can on your back over a rushing river of piss.”
― Charles Bukowski

“A real fighter never cries, never lets the weight of any blow bring him down. Except that final blow, the inevitable one, but even then they always go out like men.”
― J.A. Redmerski, The Edge of Never

“Truth, honesty, perseverance, strength, love of all kinds and forgiveness are all beautiful, Tack. The most beautiful stories ever told are the most difficult to take.”
― Kristen Ashley, Motorcycle Man

“If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry.”
― Emily Dickinson

“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.”
― Charles Bukowski, Tales of Ordinary Madness

“Pain is strange. A cat killing a bird, a car accident, a fire.... Pain arrives, BANG, and there it is, it sits on you. It's real. And to anybody watching, you look foolish. Like you've suddenly become an idiot. There's no cure for it unless you know somebody who understands how you feel, and knows how to help.”
― Charles Bukowski

“And into the darkness, to his sleeping woman, he whispered, “You don’t know this, baby, but some men have dream women too.”
― Kristen Ashley, Motorcycle Man

“Born to love you, baby,” he repeated. “Die lovin’ you, my Sylvie.”
― Kristen Ashley, Creed

“<…>When I was done speaking I felt his body had gone still again, stone still.
And silent.
Then he asked quietly, "Nightmare?"
"Nightmare," I replied firmly.
Ty didn't move.
By a miracle, I held it together.
Then he moved but it was to rest his chin on my shoulder and I closed my eyes because I needed him to go, go, go so I could fall apart again on my own.
Then he said, "Your nightmare, mama, was my dream."
My heart clenched.
He kept going. "Never had a home until you gave me one."
My breath started sticking.
"Never had anyone give to me the way you gave to me."
My breath stopped sticking and clogged.
"Never thought of findin' a woman who I wanted to have my baby."
Oh God.
"Never had light in my life, never, not once, I lived wild but I didn't burn bright until you shined your light on me."
Oh God.
"Whacked, fuckin' insane, but, at night, you curled in front of me, didn't mind I did that time that wasn't mine 'cause it meant I walked out to you."
He had to stop. He had to.
He didn't.
"Your nightmare," he whispered, turned his head and against my neck he finished, "my dream."<…>”
― Kristen Ashley, Lady Luck

“Son, let me tell you something. Even if you don't care, pretend you do. Honestly, it's the best way to go," Dad, the voice of experience, decided to wade in. "She talks about toss pillows. You don't care about toss pillows. You don't even know what toss pillows are. Pretend that toss pillows are your highest priority in life.”
― Kristen Ashley, Rock Chick Redemption

“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, they piss on their lives. They shit them away. Dumb fuckers. They concentrate too much on fucking, movies, money, family, fucking. 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. Their brains are stuffed with cotton. They look ugly, they talk ugly, they walk ugly. Play them the great music of the centuries and they can't hear it. Most people's deaths are a sham. There's nothing left to die.”
― Charles Bukowski

“That’s the beauty of books. We get to take what we want out of them and it can be different for everyone.”
― Kristen Ashley

“Learn, he says, that there will be hours, days
and months ahead of feeling absolutely terrible
and nothing can change that; neither new
girlfriends, health professionals, changes of diet, dope, humility, or
God. ”
― Charles Bukowski

“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.”
― Charles Bukowski, Tales of Ordinary Madness

“Tack grinned.
"You know," I started, "it's annoying when you grin all know-it-all."
"This isn't my know-it-all grin, Red. This is my I'm gonna get me some later grin."
I felt a couple of quivers that were on the high end of pleasant scale.
Still, I shared. "That's even more annoying."
"Don't know why since me gettin' some means you're gonna get some.”
― Kristen Ashley, Motorcycle Man

“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. At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole god-damned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidates who reminded them most of themselves. 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.”
― Charles Bukowski

“Life’s a roller coaster. Best damn ride in the park. You don’t close your eyes, hold on and wait for it to be over, babe. You keep your eyes open, lift your hands straight up in the air and enjoy the ride for as long as it lasts.”
― Kristen Ashley

“Baby,” his voice gentled, “this is me seein’ to that soft spot when I say quiet-like that I... will... be... there... in ten. And what I mean is, when I get there in ten, your ass better be there.”
Oh boy.
“Are you coming on your bike?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m in a tight, short, little aquamarine dress with high heels. I can’t get on a bike.
“You’re in a tight, short dress and high heels?” Tack asked.
“Yes.”
“I’ll be in there in five.”
― Kristen Ashley, Motorcycle Man

“I was drawn to all the wrong things: I liked to drink, I was lazy, I didn't have a god, politics, ideas, ideals. I was settled into nothingness; a kind of non-being, and I accepted it. I didn't make for an interesting person. I didn't want to be interesting, it was too hard. What I really wanted was only a soft, hazy space to live in, and to be left alone.”
― Charles Bukowski

“<…>"You're part-goof all class. Never walked in a room, any room, with a woman on my arm, any woman, who's got your looks, your style, the kinda beauty you got and the light that shines from you. So I don't get it. I don't get how a woman leads a life full of shit and comes out of it bein' part-goof and all class. That shit's impossible but there you fuckin' are. Part-goof, all class."
I felt my breath coming fast but managed to whisper, "I'm not part-goof."
"You're right. I was bein' nice. You're a total goof."
"Am not"
"Babe, you call me 'hubby'," he pointed out but my breath came faster because he called me "babe" again.
"You are my hubby."
"No one says hubby," he told me.
"I do," I told him.
"All right, I'll rephrase. No one but a goof says hubby."….<…>”
― Kristen Ashley, Lady Luck

“I love you, Bud," he whispered to Billy and two more tears escaped.
"I love you too, Mitch," Billy whispered back, my breath hitched and both males' eyes came to me.
I waved my wineglass at them and murmured, "Don't mind me. Have your moment."
Mitch leaned back, letting Billy go and grinning at me. "Men don't have moments."
"You do," I returned. "I'm witnessing one."
"This isn't a moment, honey, it's a meeting of the minds," Mitch contradicted me.”
― Kristen Ashley, Law Man

“Wars fought over a face like this,” he murmured like he was talking to himself, my heart stopped beating and his thumbs moved lightly across my cheeks. “A man would work himself into the ground for it, go down to his knees to beg to keep it, endure torture to protect it, take a bullet for it,” his eyes came to mine, “poison his brother to possess a face like this.”
― Kristen Ashley, Knight

“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.”
― Charles Bukowski, Women