Quotes from Tom Robbins

modern painting and the psychedelic sacraments -- offered humanity a new way of seeing, an enlarged and deepened definition of reality, a freshened and intensely sensual awareness of what it means to be a cognitive mammal on a tiny planet spinning precariously in the backwash of an infinite universe, a perpetually endangered species kept alive -- and occasionally driven quite mad -- by its capacity to love.

Love is the ultimate outlaw.

Four times you drive around the block, the Porsche weaving in and out of the rain-slowed traffic like the essence of a Henry James sentence weaving in and out of prepositional phrases, dependent clauses, and parenthetical asides (periodically hitting the brakes to avoid misplacing a modifier).

His first—and worst—mistake was blindly doing what he was told to do. Without questioning their methods or their motives, he allowed politicians to make the decisions that led to his early demise.

Feeling loquacious now, Switters might have gone on to offer his theory on suicide bombers, to wit: Islamic terrorist groups were successful in attracting volunteer martyrs because the young men got to strap explosives on themselves and blast valuable public property to smithereens. Exhilarating boom-boom power. If they were required to martyr themselves by being dragged behind a bus or sticking a wet finger in a light socket, volunteers would be few and far between.

Leigh-Cheri went out in the blackberries and wept. "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.

Upon patterned cushions that might have been honked, zig by zag, out of Ornette Coleman's horn, the odalisque exposed her flesh to a society that had grown frightened again of flesh.

They say that February is the shortest month, but you know they could be wrong.

It took Maestra a day and a half to coax Sailor down from the fir tree in which he'd taken refuge, and as for Hattie, her reaction was that of the typical contemporary American: I'm suffering. Therefore, somebody must owe me money. I'm hiring a lawyer.

The mystics say that as soon as you give it up, you can have it. That may be true, but who wants it when you don't want it.

God says, the check's in the mail.

It's meaning that is of no meaning. That paradox is the key to the meaning of meaning. To look for meaning--or the lack of it--in things is a game played by beings of limited consciousness. Behind everything in life is a process that is beyond meaning. Not beyond understanding, mind you, but beyond meaning.

There is no death. There are only different levels of life.

The rodent of ecstasy sings by my bedside.

The sky was a velvety black paw pressing on the white landscape with a feline delicacy, stars flying like sparks from its fur.

Damn! Why do those yellow-bellied fates always gang up on the elderly?

those rare homes in which it's spoken with any regularity are likely under police surveillance.

no matter how valid, how vital, one's belief system might be, one undermines that system and ultimately negates it when one gets rigid and dogmatic in one's adherence to it.

aching to get back in the game. Was he? Aching

I actually enjoyed construction, primarily for the camaraderie.

Love holds on to it's bad habits. - My Heart Is Not A Poodle

How we shape our understanding of others' lives is determined by what we find memorable in them, and that in turn is determined not by any potentially accurate overview of another's personality but rather by the tension and balance that exist in our daily relationships. That

At the bat of your lashes peacocks preen. Peacocks preen, elephants remember, camels go for days without water, and dinosaurs of all types become extinct.

I recommend that you make all of your major moves on the first of April. Just in case.)