Quotes from Tom Robbins

elated, perhaps, because, in a rational world where even disasters are familiar and damn near routine, something of almost fairytale flavor had occurred?

that aspect of being that once was attuned to wonder.

who not only had once posed for naked pictures but who, on at least two occasions, had openly expressed reservations about Rome's prohibition against birth control.

The peasants of Aelfric are like bushes, like salamanders. They were born one thing and will die one thing. But you . . . you have already been a warrior, a king, and a serf, and from the looks of it, you aren't through yet. Thus, you have learned the secret of the new direction. That is: a man can be many things. Maybe anything.

In time, one's palate will become insensitive, one will suffer (without knowing it) emotional malnutrition, the skin of the soul will fester with scurvy, the teeth of the heart will decay.

a hangover without a head to torment is like a philanthropist without an institution to endow)

There were no mail-order catalogues in 1492. Marco Polo's journal was the wish book of Renaissance Europe. Then, Columbus sailed the ocean blue and landed in Sears' basement.

Men live by embedding themselves in ongoing systems of illusion. Religion. Patriotism. Economics. Fashion

but the script he saw written all about him, on the signposts and facades of Alexandria, was musical, all right. It ran complicated scales on the optic nerve. Everywhere, the Arabic alphabet wiggled and popped, enlivening crumbling architecture with outbursts of linguistic jazz, notations from the DNA songbook, energetic markings as primal as grunts and as modern as the abstract electricity of synthesizer feedback.

Fairy tales and myths are dominated by accounts of rescued princesses, she reasoned. Isn't it about time that a princess returned the favor? Leigh-Cheri had a vision of the princess as hero.

There's a direct link between the buffalo hunts and Vietnam," said Switters.

Behind that rough facade, customers drank beer and danced, activities that to any good Southern Baptist invoked the Devil himself.

Pan is right," he thought. "Death can ruin a man's life even though he go on breathing.

Her vulnerability to Wiggs was opening her up (as voluntary vulnerability often can ) in unexpected ways.

In the haunted house of life, art is the only stair that doesn't creak.

a novel that does its own stunts

You see, at that juncture in my life I wasn't evolved enough to understand the fluid nature of romantic love (its indifference to human cravings for permanence and certainty); its uncivilized, undomesticated nature (less like a pretty melody than a foxish barking at the moon), or, more importantly perhaps, that it's a privilege to love someone, to truly love them; and while it's paradisiacal if she or he loves you back, it's unfair to demand or expect reciprocity.

Do you hear, darlink, what the new dishwasher wants to be called? An 'underwater ceramics engineer,' already! Abu doesn't believe his ears. He doesn't realize what a big shot he used to be in the kitchen. Ha!

We should consider ourselves lucky, honored, blessed that we possess the capacity to feel tenderness of such magnitude and be grateful even when that love is not returned. Love is the only game in which we win even when we lose.

are the Cheerios smiling bravely, insisting that the show must go on?

a free spirit in the oneness of the whole enchilada, seeing the world -- material and immaterial -- for the all-inclusive miracle it is: not a continuous undifferentiated glob of stuff, mind you, but more like a great spiraling web whose interconnected threads are beaded with pulsing blips that as much as anything else resemble notes of music. I'm all too aware of how woo-woo this sounds, but it was as real

it's easier to scratch your ass than your heart.

Incidentally, he might have added, are you aware that there's no such thing as a smithereen? The word exists only in the plural.

Most novelists write about twisted lives.