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Tom Robbins Quotes - Page 9

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

Live the beauty or your own reality.

Live the beauty or your own reality.

Reality

Outlaws are can openers in the supermarket of life.

Still Life With Woodpecker, Outlaw, Supermarkets

Tom Robbins (2003). “Still Life with Woodpecker”, p.62, Bantam

The trick is this: keep your eye on the ball. Even when you can't see the ball.

Eye, Balls, Tricks

Tom Robbins (2003). “Skinny Legs and All”, p.487, Bantam

If there’s a thing, a scene, maybe, an image that you want to see real bad, that you need to see but it doesn’t exist in the world around you, at least not in the form that you envision, then you create it so that you can look at it and have it around, or show it to other people who wouldn’t have imagined it because they perceive reality in a more narrow, predictable way. And that’s it. That’s all an artist does.

Real, Artist, People

Tom Robbins (2003). “Skinny Legs and All”, p.206, Bantam

Once, in a spasm of sappiness, you asked Q-Jo if she thought your dreams would ever come true. 'You aren't talking about dreams,' she corrected you, 'you're referring to your pathetic bourgeoisie ambitions. Dreams don't come true. Dreams are true.

Dream, Ambition, Talking

Purpose! Purposes are for animals with a hell of a lot more dignity than the human race! Just hop on that strange torpedo and ride it to wherever it's going.

Animal, Race, Purpose

Tom Robbins (2003). “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues”, p.186, Bantam

True stability results when presumed order and presumed disorder are balanced. A truly stable system expects the unexpected, is prepared to be disrupted, waits to be transformed.

Order, Organization, Waiting

Tom Robbins (2003). “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues”, p.222, Bantam

Our purpose is to consciously, deliberately evolve towards a wiser, more liberated and luminous state of being.

Purpose, States, Evolve

Tom Robbins (2006). “Wild Ducks Flying Backward”, p.210, Bantam

Above all, have a good time. If you aren’t enjoying writing it, you can hardly expect someone else to enjoy reading it.

Reading, Writing, Good Times

Rules such as "Write what you know," and "Show, don't tell," while doubtlessly grounded in good sense, can be ignored with impunity by any novelist nimble enough to get away with it. There is, in fact, only one rule in writing fiction: Whatever works, works.

Writing, Novelists, Fiction

I cannot believe that the most delicious things were placed here merely to test us, to temp us, to make it the more difficult for us to capture the grand prize: the safety of the void. To fashion of life such a petty game is unworthy of both men and gods.

Fashion, Believe, Men

Religion is not merely the opium of the masses, it's the cyanide.

Inspirational, Life, Atheist

"Skinny Legs and All". Book by Tom Robbins, 1990.

…not a fighter… an adventurer. He doesn’t attack, he engages; He doesn’t defend, he expands; He doesn’t destroy, he transforms; He doesn’t reject, he explores; ….

Fighter, Adventurer, Rejects

The enemy is every expert who practices technocratic manipulation, the enemy is every proponent of standardization and the enemy is every victim who is so dull and lazy and weak as to allow himself to be manipulated and standardized.

Practice, Lazy, Enemy

The brown paper bag is the only thing civilized man has produced that does not seem out of place in nature.

Men, Doe, Bags

Tom Robbins (2003). “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues”, p.117, Bantam

Salvador Dali and fifty cents will get you a cup of clock melt.

Fifty, Cups, Clock

Philosophers have argued for centuries about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but materialists have known all along that it depends on whether they are jitterbugging or dancing cheek to cheek.

Angel, Dancing, Philosopher

Tom Robbins (2003). “Jitterbug Perfume”, p.411, Bantam

Those who shun the whimsy of things will experience rigor mortis before death.

Inspiring, Rigor Mortis, Whimsy

Tom Robbins (2003). “Still Life with Woodpecker”, p.91, Bantam

I'm an outlaw, not a philosopher, but I know this much: there's meaning in everything, all things are connected, and a good champagne is a drink.' Bernard began to sing again. Timidly, Leigh-Cheri joined in. Between verses, they opened another bottle. The popping of its cork echoed throughout the great stone chamber. Of the three billion people on earth, only Bernard and Leigh-Cheri heard the popping of the cork and its echoes. Only Bernard and Leigh-Cheri passed out under the tablecloth.

Echoes, People, Three

The principal difference between an adventurer and a suicide is that the adventurer leaves himself a margin of escape (the narrower the margin the greater the adventure), a margin whose width and length may be determined by unknown factors but whose navigation is determined by the measure of the adventurer's nerve and wits. It is exhilarating to live by one's nerves or toward the summit of one's wits.

Suicide, Adventure, Differences

Tom Robbins (2003). “Another Roadside Attraction”, p.112, Bantam

People feel tremendous pressure to settle down in some sort of permanent space and fill it up with stuff, but deep inside they resent those structures, and they're scared to death of that stuff because they know it controls them and restricts their movements.

Space, People, Movement

Tom Robbins (2003). “Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates”, p.22, Bantam

Let us, rather, gather facts, all the facts, regardless of aesthetic appeal or theoretical social worth, and spread those facts before us not as the soothsayer spreads the innards of a turkey but as a newspaper spreads its columns. Let us be journalists, then. And like all good journalists, we shall present our facts in an order that will satisfy the famous five W's: wow, whoopee, wahoo, why-not and whew.

Order, Turkeys, Why Not

Tom Robbins (2003). “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues”, p.139, Bantam

We only rise above mediocrity when there's something at stake. p. 174

Mediocrity, Rise Above, Stakes

If you want your tree to produce plenty o' fruit, you've got to cut it back from time to time. Same thing with your neural cells. Some people might call it brain damage. I call it prunin'.

Cutting, Cells, People

Tom Robbins (2003). “Jitterbug Perfume”, p.313, Bantam

Transformation, liberation and celebration are the themes of all my novels.

Transformation, Celebration, Theme

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