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Tom Robbins Quotes - Page 6

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

And who ever said the world was fair, little lady? Maybe death is fair, but certainly not life. We must accept the unfairness as proof of the sublime flux of existence, the capricious music of the universe- and go on

And who ever said the world was fair, little lady? Maybe death is fair, but certainly not life. We must accept the unfairness as proof of the sublime flux of existence, the capricious music of the universe- and go on about our tasks

Sublime, Tasks, Goes On

A book no more contains reality than a clock contains time. A book may measure so-called reality as a clock measures so-called time; a book may create an illusion of reality as a clock creates an illusion of time; a book may be real, just as a clock is real (both more real, perhaps, than those ideas to which they allude); but let's not kid ourselves - all a clock contains is wheels and springs and all a book contains is sentences.

Spring, Real, Book

Tom Robbins (2003). “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues”, p.121, Bantam

There are times when we can feel destiny close around us like a fist around a doorknob. Sure, we can resist. But a knob that won't turn, a door that sticks and never budges, is a nuisance to the gods. The gods may kick in the jamb. Worse, they may walk away in disgust, leaving us to hang dumbly from our tight hinges, deprived of any other chance in life to swing open into unnecessary risk and thus into enchantment.

Destiny, Swings, Doors

"Continental Drifting With Tom Robbins" by Mary Eisenhart, www.sfgate.com. July 23, 2000.

I show up in my writing room at approximately 10 A.M. every morning without fail. Sometimes my muse sees fit to join me there and sometimes she doesn't, but she always knows where I'll be. She doesn't need to go hunting in the taverns or on the beach or drag the boulevard looking for me.

Beach, Morning, Writing

The brutal truth is, we're scarcely 'educating' children at all. Even if you overlook the guilt, fear, bigotry, and dangerous anti-intellectual flapdoodle being funneled into young brains by schools on the religious right, what we're doing is training kids to be cogs in the wheels of commerce.

Religious, Children, School

Using words to describe magic is like using a screwdriver to cut roast beef.

Cutting, Magic, Beef

To the extent that this world surrenders its richness and diversity, it surrenders its poetry; to the extent that it relinquishes its capacity to surprise, it relinquishes its music; to the extent that it loses its ability to tolerate ridiculous and even dangerous exceptions, it loses its grace.

Diversity, Grace, World

There's always the same amount of good luck and bad luck in the world. If one person doesn't get the bad luck, somebody else will have to get it in their place. There's always the same amount of good and evil, too. We can't eradicate evil, we can only evict it, force it to move across town. And when evil moves, some good always goes with it. But we can never alter the ratio of good to evil. All we can do is keep things stirred up so neither good nor evil solidifies. That's when things get scary. Life is like a stew, you have to stir it frequently, or all the scum rises to the top.

Moving, Good Luck, Evil

Tom Robbins (2003). “Still Life with Woodpecker”, p.92, Bantam

Teachers who offer you the ultimate answers do not possess the ultimate answers, for if they did, they would know that the ultimate answers cannot be given, they can only be received.

Teacher, Answers, Given

Tom Robbins (2003). “Jitterbug Perfume”, p.422, Bantam

There exists a false aristocracy based on family name, property, and inherited wealth. But there likewise exists a true aristocracy based on intelligence, talent and virtue.

Names, Aristocracy, Talent

Tom Robbins (2003). “Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates”, p.61, Bantam

The function of the artist is to provide what life does not.

Artist, Doe, Function

"Another Roadside Attraction". Book by Tom Robbins, 1971.

Leave me in the night but please don't leave me in the dark

Dark, Night, Don't Leave Me

Tom Robbins (2003). “Skinny Legs and All”, p.92, Bantam

Albert Camus wrote that the only serious question is whether to kill yourself or not. Tom Robbins wrote that the only serious question is whether time has a beginning and an end. Camus clearly got up on the wrong side of bed, and Robbins must have forgotten to set the alarm. There is only one serious question. And that is: Who knows how to make love stay? Answer me that and I will tell you whether or not to kill yourself.

Making Love, Bed, Alarms

Tom Robbins (2003). “Still Life with Woodpecker”, p.5, Bantam

A person's looking for a simple truth to live by, there it is. CHOICE. To refuse to passively accept what we've been handed by nature or society, but to choose for ourselves. CHOICE. That's the difference between emptiness and substance, between a life actually lived and a wimpy shadow cast on an office wall.

Wall, Simple, Differences

Tom Robbins (2003). “Still Life with Woodpecker”, p.241, Bantam

The full moon - the mandala of the sky.

Moon, Sky, Full Moon

The beet is the most intense of vegetables. The radish, admittedly, is more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent, not of passion. Tomatoes are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity. Beets are deadly serious.

Running, Food, Passion

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

Those same forces that drive a genius to create the things or ideas that entertain or enlighten us often gobble so much of his personality that he has none left for the social graces.

Ideas, Personality, Grace

Tom Robbins (2003). “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues”, p.137, Bantam

Louisiana in September was like an obscene phone call from nature. The air - moist, sultry, secretive, and far from fresh - felt as if it were being exhaled into one's face. Sometimes it even sounded like heavy breathing.

Phones, Air, Breathing

Tom Robbins (2003). “Jitterbug Perfume”, p.74, Bantam

Meditation... dissolves the mind. It erases itself. Throws the ego out on its big brittle ass.

Meditation, Ego, Mind

If you need to visualize the soul, think of it as a cross between a wolf howl, a photon and a dribble of dark molasses. But what it really is, as near as I can tell, is a packet of information. It's a program, a piece of hyperspatial software designed explicitly to interface with the Mystery. Not a mystery, mind you - the Mystery. The one that can never be solved.

Dark, Thinking, Soul

Intimacy is the principal source of the sugars which this life is sweetened!

Sugar, Life Is, Intimacy

The trouble with the fast lane is that all the movement is horizontal. And I like to go vertical sometimes.

Movement, Sometimes, Trouble

The enemy is the tyranny of the dull mind.

Mind, Enemy, Dull

Certain individual words do possess more pitch, more radiance, more shazam! than others, but it's the way words are juxtaposed with other words in a phrase or sentence that can create magic. Perhaps literally. The word "grammar," like its sister word "glamour," is actually derived from an old Scottish word that meant "sorcery." When we were made to diagram sentences in high school, we were unwittingly being instructed in syntax sorcery, in wizardry. We were all enrolled at Hogwarts. Who knew?

School, Magic, Sorcery

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

The fact is, what I hated in the Church was what I hated in society. Namely, authoritarians. Power freaks. Rigid dogmatists. Those greedy, underloved, undersexed twits who want to run everything. While the rest of us are busy living - busy tasting and testing and hugging and kissing and goofing and growing - they are busy taking over.

Running, Kissing, Hug

Tom Robbins (2003). “Another Roadside Attraction”, p.206, Bantam

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