Quotes from Tom Robbins

Unless it was about to cause you bodily harm, rot your rhubarb on the stalk, or carry off your children, weather ought either to be celebrated or ignored.

If we're ever going to get the world back on a natural footing, back in tune with natural rhythyms, if we're going to nurture the Earth and protect it and have fun with it and learn from it - which is what mothers do with their children - then we've got to put technology (an aggressive masculine system) in its proper place, which is that of a tool to be used sparingly, joyfully, gently and only in the fullest cooperation with nature. Nature must govern technology, not the other way around.

To wit: actions, like sounds, divide the flow of time into beats.[...]The quality of a man's life depends on the rhyhmic structure he is able to impose upon the input and output of energy.

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

If the earth needs night as well as day, wouldn't it follow that the soul requires endarkenment to balance enlightenment?

It's personal freedom, not hundred dollar bills that lights the soul's cigar.

Time brought along its secretary, memory, and space brought its brat, loneliness.

Hi. Honey! exclaimed Patsy. Good to hear your voice! Listen, I oughtta go pull my robe on 'fore we commence. You caught me nekkid as a jaybird. 'Nekkid' or 'naked,' mama? What's the blessed difference? Are you making Yankee fun of the way I talk? The way you used to talk? No, no, mama, let me tell you. Naked means you just don't have any clothes on. Nekkid means you don't have any clothes on and you're fixing to get into trouble.

Tunnel vision is caused by an optic fungus that multiplies when the brain is less energetic than the ego. It is complicated by exposure to politics.

There're many ways, my dear, to victimize people. The most insidious way is to persuade them that they're victims.

Every daydream that involves the past sports in its hatband a ticket to the grave.

How can you admire a human who consciously embraces the bland, the mediocre, and the safe rather than risk the suffering that disappointment can bring?

Though February lay about her shoulders like a cloak of lead.

There are no such things as synonyms! he practically shouted. Deluge is not the same as flood.

What I'm saying is simply that every totalitarian society, no matter how strict, has had its underground. In fact, two undergrounds. There's the underground involved in political resistance and the underground involved in preserving beauty and fun--which is to say, preserving the human spirit.

There is evidence that the honoree [Leonard Cohen] might be privy to the secret of the universe, which, in case you're wondering, is simply this: Everything is connected. Everything . Many, if not most, of the links are difficult to determine. The instrument, the apparatus, the focused ray that can uncover and illuminate those connections is language.

The function of the artist,' the Navajo answered, 'is to provide what life does not.

Civilization is a mutant beast that emerged from the shattered egg of primitive stability.-Sissy Hankshaw

How could you be so naive as to tell a human being the truth? Men live by embedding themselves in ongoing systems of illusion. Religion. Patriotism. Economics. Fashion. That sort of thing. If you wish to gain the favor of the two-legged ilk, you must learn to fabricate as wholeheartedly as they do.

The most important thing is love," said Leigh-Cheri. "I know that now. There's no point in saving the world if it means losing the moon.

It might be noted here that Freudian analysts of fairy tales have suggested that kissing toads and frogs is symbolized fellatio. In that regard, Princess Leigh-Cheri was, on a conscious level, innocent, although not so naïve as Queen Tilli, who though fellatio was an obscure Italian opera and was annoyed that she couldn't find the score.

Some families ran their own little version of the Middle East.

The longer Ellen Cherry thought about it, the more convinced she became that the mission of the artist in an overtechnologized, overmasculinized society was to call the old magic back to life. Could it be done? Yeah, you pessimistic wimps, it could. Could she do it? Probably not, but she could give it a whirl.

If love eats the donut, does time eat the hole?