Charles Bukowski Good Quotations

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.

Love is a form of prejudice. You love what you need, you love what makes you feel good, you love what is convenient. How can you say you love one person when there are ten thousand people in the world that you would love more if you ever met them? But you'll never meet them.

A yet women -good women- frightened me because they eventually wanted your soul, and what was left of mine, I wanted to keep. Basically I craved prostitutes, base women, because they were deadly and hard and made no personal demands. Nothing was lost when they left. Yet at the same time I yearned for a gentle, good woman, despite the overwhelming price.

...maybe a damned good night's sleep will bring me back to a gentle sanity. But at the moment, I look about this room and, like myself, it's all in disarray: things fallen out of place, cluttered, jumbled, lost, knocked over and I can't put it straight, don't want to. Perhaps living through these petty days will get us ready for the dangerous ones.

Don't wait for the good woman. She doesn't exist.

Cautiously, I allowed myself to feel good at times. I found moments of peace in cheap rooms just staring at the knobs of some dresser or listening to the rain in the dark. The less I needed the better I felt.

one can never be sure whether it's good poetry or bad acid

Many a good man has been put under the bridge by a woman.

I think that the world should be full of cats and full of rain, that's all, just cats and rain, rain and cats, very nice, good night.

I've learned to feel good when I feel good. it's better to be driven around in a red porsche than to own one. the luck of the fool is inviolate.

Keep your money in your pocket. Or bet it on a good horse.

we drove on and on, past little villages and both good things and bad things were happening to the people in those villages too, but I still was nothing but arms and ears and eyes and maybe there'd be either some good luck for me or more death tomorrow.

I enjoy the bad things that are said about me. It enhances sales and makes me feel evil. I don't like to feel good 'cause I am good. But evil? Yes. It gives me another dimension.

And yet women-good women--frightened me because they eventually wanted your soul, and what was left of mine, I wanted to keep.

and our few good times will be rare because we have the critical sense and are not easy to fool with laughter