Quotes from Tom Robbins

On Sa-bat, from which comes our Sabbath, men as well as women were commanded to rest, for when the moon menstruated, the taboo was on everyone. Originally (and naturally) observed once a month, the Sabbath was later to be incorporated by the Christians into their Creation myth and made conveniently weekly.

Mediocrity is the standard rather than the exception among practicing artists (Sturgeon's rule: 90 percent of everything is shit)

although the phrase "come back" is misleading because in the realm of meditative daydream the only way to "go there" is, paradoxically, to totally "be here.

So nowadays hard-minded men with hard muscles and hard hats are relieved from their jobs

on Sundays because of an archetypal psychological response to menstruation.

Sandwiches were invented by the Earl of Sandwich, popcorn was invented by the Earl of Popcorn, and salad dressing by the Oil of Vinegar.

I'd like to think that had I known the truth, I might have been a kinder, more loving person. If only we knew the Truth, mightn't we all?

New York City keeps its allotment of sunshine in a Swiss bank account and tries to get by on the interest, which is compounded quarterly. In contrast, the Dakota sun is as open as the books of a village church steward, and even in September, after summer's big bucks have all been spent, it is so charitable no one would think of demanding an audit.

Every smoker is an embodiment of Prometheus, stealing fire from the gods and bringing it on back home.

Oh, I thought that this day and age you maybe would be known as bovine custodial officers.

We each took a fierce delight in introducing the other to some new idea or development, the next amazing artist or record album, always hustling to out-avant the other's garde. It was exciting, stimulating, but also draining, especially when coupled as it was with mutual romantic jealousy, arguably the dumbest, most useless of human emotions.

It is complicated by exposure to politics. When a good dea is run through the filters and compressors of ordinary tunnel vision, it not only comps out reduced in scale and value but in its new dogmatic configuration produces effects the opposite of those for which it originally was intended." 86

Besides, what kind of pilgrimage would it be if it didn't contain some element of hardship and enigma? The quest is essential to the ritual. To orient ourselves at the interface of the visible and invisible worlds - which may be the purpose of all pilgrimages - we must embrace the search as well as its goal. If our journey into the heart (or vagina) of meaning resembles in any appreciable manner our last trip to the shopping mall, we're probably doing something wrong.

As a grandiose self-deception, war is o' the same magnitude as religion. We embrace war or religion—usually both at the same time—as a means o' defeatin' death, but neither o' them do a blinkin' thing but sanction dyin'. Throughout history, Death's best friend has been a priest with a knife.

God says the check is in the mail

lizards were using their tails to write love letters in the sand ...

Joseph Campbell was so conversant with the world of wonders that he awakened the potential for wonder in everyone he touched. He unbuttoned the secret earth for us and let the inexhaustible inspiration of Being stream through.

It is not a heart: light, heavy, kind or broken; dear, hard, bleeding or transplanted; it is not a heart.

human reality is often simultaneously somber and funny.

play, you big wild gypsy girl, until beauty and wildness and longing are one.

If you lack the iron and the fuzz to take control of your own life, if you insist on leaving your fate to the gods, then the gods will repay your weakness by having a grin or two at your expense. Should you fail to pilot your own ship, don't be surprised at what inappropriate port you find yourself docked.

How we shape our understanding of others' lives is determined by what we find memorable in them

and how dangerous and dumb it can be to embalm yourself in the attractive amber of the past.

Everyone knows that ghosts don't piss!