chitbong

“You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.”
          —	Charles Bukowski.
          
          Cứu thế giới. Một cụm từ hài hước, ngay cả với tôi lúc này. Cứu thế giới. Tôi không ngừng nghĩ về nó. Một lý tưởng mơ hồ. Một mũi tên với ý định tốt đẹp nhưng trừu tượng và mất phương hướng nhất có thể. Cứu thế giới. Ai cũng muốn cuộc đời mình mang một ý nghĩa. Trái tim của chủ nghĩa anh hùng. Cứu thế giới. Không ai biết phải làm thế nào, không ai biết phải bắt đầu từ đâu hay nó sẽ phương hại đến những ai. Không ai biết nó có kết cục như thế nào.
          
          Tôi bỏ cuộc, khi nhận ra mình còn không thể tự cứu lấy chính mình.

“We are
          Born like this
          Into this
          Into these carefully mad wars
          Into the sight of broken factory windows of emptiness
          Into bars where people no longer speak to each other
          Into fist fights that end as shootings and knifings
          Born into this
          Into hospitals which are so expensive that it’s cheaper to die
          Into lawyers who charge so much it’s cheaper to plead guilty
          Into a country where the jails are full and the madhouses closed
          Into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes.”
          - Charles Bukowski

“there is a loneliness in this world so great
          that you can see it in the slow movement of
          the hands of a clock.
          
          people so tired
          mutilated
          either by love or no love.
          
          people just are not good to each other
          one on one.
          
          the rich are not good to the rich
          the poor are not good to the poor.
          
          we are afraid.
          
          our educational system tells us
          that we can all be
          big-ass winners.
          
          it hasn't told us
          about the gutters
          or the suicides.
          
          or the terror of one person
          aching in one place
          alone
          
          untouched
          unspoken to
          
          watering a plant.”
          - Charles Bukowski

“If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery--isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is.”
          - Charles Bukowski

“The reason I prefer the sledgehammer to the rapier and the reason I believe in blunt, violent, confrontational forms for the presentation of my ideas is because I see that what’s happening to the lives of people is not rapierlike, it is not gentle, it is not subtle. It is direct, hard and violent. The slow violence of poverty, the slow violence of untreated disease. Of unemployment, hunger, discrimination. This isn’t the violence of some guy opening fire with an Uzi in a McDonald’s and forty people are dead. The real violence that goes on every day, unheard, unreported, over and over, multiplied a millionfold.”
          - George Carlin

“Forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land, they own and control the corporations that've long since bought and paid for, the senate, the congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pocket, and they own all the big media companies so they control just about all of the news and the information you get to hear. They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else. But I'll tell you what they don't want. They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them.”
          - George Carlin

“Some people see things that are and ask, Why?
          Some people dream of things that never were and ask, Why not?
          Some people have to go to work and don't have time for all that.”
          
          **
          
          “The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it? A Death! What’s that, a bonus? I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you’re too young, you get a gold watch, you go to work. You work forty years until you’re young enough to enjoy your retirement. You do drugs, alcohol, you party, you get ready for high school. You go to grade school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become a little baby, you go back into the womb, you spend your last nine months floating …and you finish off as an orgasm.”
          
          - George Carlin

“Here's all you have to know about men and women: women are crazy, men are stupid. And the main reason women are crazy is that men are stupid.”
          - George Carlin

“The more I see of the moneyed classes, the more I understand the guillotine.”
          - George Bernard Shaw

“All the gods, all the heavens, all the hells, are within you.”
          - Joseph Campbell