"[…] I hated them because they had something I had not yet had, and I said to myself, I said to myself again, someday I will be as happy as any of you, you will see."
— Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye
This remains one of the only things I bothered to memorize in highschool that I still manage to remember.
“And yet I knew that what I saw wasn’t as simple and good as it appeared. There was a price to be paid for it all, a general falsity, that could easily be believed, and could be the first step down a dead-end street. The band began to play again and the boys and girls began to dance again and the lights revolved overhead throwing shades of gold, the red, then blue, then green, then gold again on the couples. As I watched them I said to myself, someday my dance will begin. When that day comes I will have something that they don’t have.
But then it got to be too much for me. I hated them. I hated their beauty, their untroubled youth, and as I watched them dance through the magic coloured pools of light, holding each other, feeling so good, little unscathed children, temporarily in luck, […]”
(Source: wearefixed, via henrycharlesbukowski)