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Tom Robbins Quotes - Page 12

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

When life demands more of people than they demand of life - as is ordinarily the case - what results is a resentment of life almost as deep-seated as the fear of death

When life demands more of people than they demand of life - as is ordinarily the case - what results is a resentment of life almost as deep-seated as the fear of death

Frustration, People, Demand

The Middle Ages hangs over history's belt like a beer belly. It is too late now for aerobic dancing or cottage cheese lunches to reduce the Middle Ages. History will have to wear size 48 shorts forever.

Beer, Lunch, Dancing

"Jitterbug Perfume". Book by Tom Robbins, 1984.

Data in our psychic program is often nonlinear, nonhierarchical, archaic, alive, and teeming with paradox. Simply booting up is a challenge, if not for no other reason than that most of us find acknowledging the unknowable and monitoring its intrusions upon the familiar and mundane more than a little embarrassing.

Psychics, Data, Challenges

The universe does not have laws. It has habits. And habits can be broken.

Law, Broken, Doe

Tom Robbins (2003). “Jitterbug Perfume”, p.312, Bantam

Reality is contradictory. And it's paradoxical. If there's any one word -- if you had to pick one word to describe the nature of the universe -- I think that word would be paradox. That's true at the subatomic level, right through sociological, psychological, philosophical levels on up to cosmic levels.

Philosophical, Reality, Thinking

To one degree or another, everybody is connected to the Mystery, and everybody secretly yearns to expand the connection. That requires expanding the soul. These things can enlarge the soul: laughter, danger, imagination, meditation, wild nature, passion, compassion, psychedelics, beauty, iconoclasm, and driving around in the rain with the top down. These things can diminish it: fear, bitterness, blandness, trendiness, egotism, violence, corruption, ignorance, grasping, shining, and eating ketchup on cottage cheese.

Laughter, Rain, Ignorance

Human beings were not well served by permanence or stasis. Obviously, if individuals were progressing, they were undergoing a series of presumably desirable alterations, but in a universe where flux is fundamental, it can be argued that even change for the worse is preferable to no change at all. Isn't fixity the hallmark of the living dead?.

Progress, Fundamentals, Evolution

Tom Robbins (2003). “Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates”, p.69, Bantam

Actually, there are countless ways to live upon this tremorous sphere in mirth and good health, and probably only one way - the industrial, urbanized, herding way - to live here stupidly, and man has hit upon that one way.

Men, Way To Live, Mirth

America is a nation of 270 million people: 100 million of them are gangsters, another 100 million are hustlers, 50 million are complete lunatics, and every single one of us is secretly in show business. Isn't that fabulous?

Funny, Humorous, America

Tom Robbins (2006). “Wild Ducks Flying Backward”, p.187, Bantam

Outlaws, like lovers, poets, and tubercular composers who cough blood onto piano keys, do their finest work in the slippery rays of the moon.

Moon, Keys, Blood

Tom Robbins (2003). “Still Life with Woodpecker”, p.58, Bantam

The theme of corporate stories (and millions drink them in every day) seldom varies: to be happy you must consume, to be special you must conform. Absurd, obviously, yet our identities have become so fragile, so elusive, that we seem content to let advertisers provide us with their version of who we are, to let them recreate us in their image: a cookie-cutter image based on market research, shallow sociology, and insidious lies.

Lying, Special You, Identity

"(Revisiting) The Syntax of Sorcery: An Interview with Tom Robbins". Interview with Tony Vigorito, realitysandwich.com. May 9, 2014.

I removed the freeway from its temporal context. Overpasses, cloverleafs, exit ramps took on the personality of Mayan ruins for me. Without destination, without cessation, my run was often silent and empty; there were no increments, no arbitrary graduations reducing time to functional units. I abstracted and purified.

Running, Personality, Arbitrary

I'll follow him to the ends of the earth,' she sobbed. Yes, darling. But the earth doesn't have any ends. Columbus fixed that.

Earth, Woodpeckers, Columbus

Tom Robbins (2003). “Still Life with Woodpecker”, p.122, Bantam

To an artist a metaphor is as real as a dollar.

Real, Artist, Dollars

Tom Robbins (2003). “Another Roadside Attraction”, p.345, Bantam

The one thing emphasized in any creative writing course is 'write what you know,' and that automatically drives a wooden stake through the heart of imagination. If they really understood the mysterious process of creating fiction, they would say, 'You can write about anything you can imagine.'

Writing, Heart, Creating

I'm probably more interested in sentences than anything else in life.

Writing, Sentences

If complexity doesn't beat you, paradox will.

Paradox, Beats, Complexity

My desire was no less than before, you understand, but I no longer identified with the desire. Perhaps that is why taking them too seriously, we not only increase our susceptibility to disappointment, we actually create a climate inhospitable to the free and easy fulfillment of those desires.

Disappointment, Desire, Climate

Tom Robbins (2003). “Jitterbug Perfume”, p.132, Bantam

Unfortunately, little darlings, there is no such thing as a simple love story.The most transitory puppy crush is complex to the extent of lying beyond the far reaches of the brain's understanding.

Crush, Lying, Simple

Tom Robbins (2003). “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues”, p.81, Bantam

Usually, autobiography is such an indulgence of the ego.

Ego, Autobiography, Indulgence

The word desire suggests that there is something we do not have. If we have everything already, then there can be no desire, for there is nothing left to want. I think that what the Buddha may have been trying to tell us is that we have it all, each of us, all the time; therefore, desire is simply unnecessary.

Buddhist, Thinking, Desire

Tom Robbins (2003). “Jitterbug Perfume”, p.129, Bantam

The Earth is God's pinball machine and each quake, tidal wave, flash flood and volcanic eruption is the result of a TILT that occurs when God, cheating, tries to win free games.

Cheating, Winning, Games

Tom Robbins (2003). “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues”, p.226, Bantam

Western civilization was declining too fast for comfort, but too slowly to be very exciting.

Civilization, Comfort, Exciting

Don't talk about it - you'll talk it away. Let the ideas flow from your mind to the page without exposing them to air. Especially hot air.

Writing, Air, Ideas

Very few people can write in a crowd. This is a very solitary occupation. I have known people more talented than me who never made it. And the primary reason was always that they couldn't stand to be alone for several hours a day. Any writer worth anything has mastered the art. The art of solitude.

Art, Writing, People

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