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Tom Robbins Quotes - Page 11

All Quotes Adventure Age Anxiety Art Authority Balance Beach Belief Birth Children Choices Christianity Confusion Crime Culture Dancing Desire Destiny Doubt Earth Ego Evidence Evil Evolution Fear Fun Funny Genius Giving God Grace Heart Heaven Hell Home House Humanity Ignorance Imagination Insanity Inspiration Inspirational Jesus Journey Joy Kissing Language Laughter Legacy Life Love Lust Lying Magic Making Love Manipulation Mediocrity Moon Morning Passion Personality Perspective Philosophy Prayer Purpose Rain Reading Reality Risk Running Sacrifice School Seven Soul Suffering Today Understanding Universe Violence Wall Water Writing

The illusion of the seventh veil was the illusion that you could get somebody else to do it for you. To think for you. To hang on your cross. The priest, the rabbi, the imam, the swami, the philosophical novelist were

The illusion of the seventh veil was the illusion that you could get somebody else to do it for you. To think for you. To hang on your cross. The priest, the rabbi, the imam, the swami, the philosophical novelist were traffic cops, at best. They might direct you through a busy intersection, but they wouldn't follow you home and park your car.

Philosophical, Home, Thinking

Life is too small a container for certain individuals. Some of them, such as Alobar, huff and puff and try to expand the container. Others, such as Kudra, seek to pry the lid off and hop out.

Trying, Puff, Life Is

Tom Robbins (2003). “Jitterbug Perfume”, p.230, Bantam

The sky was the color of Edgar Allan Poe's pajamas.

Color, Sky, Pajamas

O tequila, savage water of sorcery, what confusion and mischief your sly, rebellious drops do generate

Water, Confusion, Sorcery

Tom Robbins (2003). “Still Life with Woodpecker”, p.48, Bantam

Every day is Judgement Day. Always has been. Always will be.

Judgement, Judgement Day, Has Beens

We use so much bad language that it forms a barrier between ourselves and the truth.

Use, Language, Form

Sometimes one gets the feeling that life still thinks it's living in Paris in the '30s.

Thinking, Paris, Feelings

In the end, perhaps we should simply imagine a joke; a long joke that's continually retold in an accent too thick and strange to ever be completely understood. Life is that joke my friends. The soul is the punch line.

Long, Soul, Lines

I am looking for the novelists whose writing is an extension of their intellect rather than an extension of their neurosis.

Writing, Novelists, Neurosis

Tom Robbins (2003). “Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates”, p.31, Bantam

When a culture is being dumbed down as effectively as ours is, its narrative arts (literature, film, theatre) seem to vacillate between the brutal and the bland, sometimes in the same work.

Art, Theatre, Culture

"The Syntax of Sorcery: An Interview with Tom Robbins". Interview with Tony Vigorito, realitysandwich.com. June 6, 2012.

Should one be shallow enough to view existence as a system of rewards and punishments, one soon learns that we pay as dearly for our triumphs as we do for our defeats.

Views, Punishment, Rewards

Tom Robbins (2003). “Jitterbug Perfume”, p.192, Bantam

In East of Eden, John Steinbeck wrote that there's never been a great creative collaboration. When the Beatles first burst on the scene, I thought they were proving him wrong. Later, we learned that Lennon and McCartney had each composed their pop masterpieces separately, individually. So it goes.

Eden, Creative Collaboration, East

What are the odds that two separate writers, strangers, a thousand miles apart, would each invent fictions in which guys take girls to an esoteric frog lecture on their first date? If that isn't synchronicity, it's something equally as weird.

Girl, Odds, Two

Birth and death were easy. It was life that was hard.

Funny, Life, Birth

Tom Robbins (2003). “Jitterbug Perfume”, p.33, Bantam

If little else, the brain is an educational toy.

Educational, Brain, Littles

Tom Robbins (2003). “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues”, p.130, Bantam

It's hard to say who's a greater threat to the world, an ambitious CEO with a big ad budget or a crafty cleric with an obsolete Bible verse.

Ambitious, World, Bible Verse

"Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates". Book by Tom Robbins, 2000.

Time passed. Art came off the walls and became rituals. Ritual became religion. Religion spawned science. Science led to big business. And big business, if it continues on its present, mindless trajectory, could land those lucky enough to survive its ultimate legacy back into caves again.

Art, Wall, Land

In the end what will prevail is your passion not your tale, for love is the Holy Grail.

Love, Passion, Holy Grail

Tom Robbins (2005). “Villa Incognito”, p.235, Bantam

I started writing when I was 5 years old. I would dictate stories to my mother, and she would copy them in a scrapbook. If she changed anything to make it, in her opinion, better, I would throw a tantrum.

Mother, Writing, Years

Much more than an entertaining set of exaggerated facts, fiction is a metaphoric method of describing, dramatizing and condensing historical events, personal actions, psychological states and the symbolic knowledge encoded within the collective unconscious; things, events and conditions that are otherwise too diffuse and/or complex to be completely digested or appreciated by the prevailing culture.

Collective Unconscious, Historical, Fiction

You don't have to be a genius to recognize one. If you did, Einstein would never have gotten invited to the White House.

White, House, Genius

Tom Robbins (2003). “Jitterbug Perfume”, p.70, Bantam

Slavic peoples get their physical characteristics from potatoes, their smoldering inquietude from radishes, their seriousness from beets.

Beets, Potatoes, Characteristics

Tom Robbins (2003). “Jitterbug Perfume”, p.1, Bantam

The more advertising I see, the less I want to buy.

Want, Advertising

Tom Robbins (2003). “Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates”, p.160, Bantam

Hold on to your divine blush, your innate rosy magic, or end up brown. Once you're brown, you'll find out you're blue. As blue as indigo. And you know what that means. Indigo. Indigoing. Indigone.

Mean, Blue, Magic

Bland writing - timid, antiseptic, vanilla writing - is nearly as unhealthy as the brutal and dark. Instead of sipping, say, elixir, nectar, tequila, or champagne, the reader is invited to slurp lumpy milk or choke on the author's dust bunnies.

Writing, Dark, Dust

"The Syntax of Sorcery: An Interview with Tom Robbins". Interview with Tony Vigorito, realitysandwich.com. June 6, 2012.

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