Tom Robbins Quotes

Rap music... sounds like somebody feeding a rhyming dictionary to a popcorn popper.

My faith is whatever makes me feel good about being alive. If your religion doesn't make you feel good to be alive, what the hell is the point of it?

Should you fail to pilot your own ship, don't be surprised at what inappropriate port you find yourself docked.

People tend the take everything too seriously. Especially themselves. Yep. And that's probably what makes 'em scared and hurt so much of the time. Life is too serious to take that seriously.

To emphasize the afterlife is to deny life. To concentrate on heaven is to create hell.

A mediocre failure is as insufferable as a mediocre success. Embrace failure! Seek it out. Learn to love it. That may be the only way any of us will ever be free.

Outlaws are can openers in the supermarket of life.

Danger is to adventure what garlic is to spaghetti sauce. Without it, you just end up with stewed tomatoes.

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

When humans were young, they were pushed around in strollers. When they were old, they were pushed around in wheelchairs. In between, they were just pushed around.

To some extent, Seattle remains a frontier metropolis, a place where people can experiment with their lives, and change and grow and make things happen.

Self-esteem is for sissies. Accept that you're a pimple and try to keep a lively sense of humor about it. That way lies grace - and maybe even glory.

In order to be respected, authority has got to be respectable.

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

A sense of humor...is superior to any religion so far devised.

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

If it is committed in the name of God or country, there is no crime so heinous that the public will not forgive it.

Certainly that sputterless little candleflame of the mediocre mind known as 'common sense' has never produced anything worth celebrating.

Some folks hide and some folks seek, and seeking when its mindless, neurotic, desperate, or pusillanimous, can be a form of hiding.

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

The full moon - the mandala of the sky.

Violence stinks no matter which side of it you're on. But now and then there's nothing left to do but hit the other person over the head with a frying pan.

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.

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

Human folly does not impede the turning of the stars.

Solace? That's why God made fermented beverages and the blues.

What we have here is an unexpected touchdown on the runway of the heart.

Fire is the reuniting of matter with oxygen. If one bears that in mind, every blaze may be seen as a reunion, an occasion of chemical joy.

The first time that she spread her legs for him it had been like opening her jaws for the dentist.

There is a similarity between juggling and composing on the typewriter. The trick is, when you spill something, make it look like a part of the act.

Hawaii made the mouth of her soul water.

People who sacrifice beauty for efficiency get what they deserve. (Bernard Mickey Wrangle, p 99)

It's good to bear in mind that like it or not, enlightenment has always been, even in a golden age, pretty much limited to an elite.

Who knows how to make love stay? Tell love you are going to the Junior's Deli on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn to pick up a cheesecake, and if love stays, it can have half.

Christianity is merely a system for turning priestesses into handmaidens, queens into concubines, and goddesses into muses.

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.

There's birth, there's death, and in between there's maintenance.

A spirit cannot soar with only one wing.

Once one pays some attention to something, then you begin to see evidence of it everywhere.

The highest function of love is that it makes the loved one a unique and irreplacable being.

Cries for help are frequently inaudible.

Wit and playfulness represent a desperately serious transcendence of evil. Humor is both a form of wisdom and a means of survival.

You knows dat in New Orleans is not morning 'til dee sun come up.

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

Brilliantly, ecstatically, irrepressibly. This is the way to burn

As a child, I was an imaginary playmate.

Always compare yourself to the best. Even if you never measure up, it can't help but make you better.

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

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.

You have to eat your technique. Digest it. It's in your blood, but you're not concerned with it anymore.