Quotes from Tom Robbins

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.

We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love.

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

disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business....

Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won't adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honor and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet. That would mean that security is out of the question. The words "make" and "stay" become inappropriate. My love for you has no strings attached. I love you for free.

It's never too late to have a happy childhood.

Our lives are not as limited as we think they are; the world is a wonderfully weird place; consensual reality is significantly flawed; no institution can be trusted, but love does work; all things are possible; and we all could be happy and fulfilled if we only had the guts to be truly free and the wisdom to shrink our egos and quit taking ourselves so damn seriously.

We are our own dragons as well as our own heroes, and we have to rescue ourselves from ourselves.

Just because you're naked doesn't mean you're sexy. Just because you're cynical doesn't mean you're cool.

There are many things worth living for, a few things worth dying for, and nothing worth killing for.

The unhappy person resents it when you try to cheer him up, because that means he has to stop dwelling on himself and start paying attention to the universe. Unhappiness is the ultimate form of self-indulgence. When you're unhappy, you get to pay a lot of attention to yourself. You get to take yourself oh so very seriously.

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

If you believe in peace, act peacefully; if you believe in love, acting lovingly; if you believe every which way, then act every which way, that's perfectly valid - but don't go out trying to sell your beliefs to the system. You end up contradicting what you profess to believe in, and you set a bum example. If you want to change the world, change yourself.

There is no such thing as a weird human being, It's just that some people require more understanding than others.

Albert Camus wrote that the only serious question is whether to kill yourself or not. Tom Robbins wrote that the only serious question is whether time has a beginning and an end. Camus clearly got up on the wrong side of bed, and Robbins must have forgotten to set the alarm. There is only one serious question. And that is: Who knows how to make love stay? Answer me that and I will tell you whether or not to kill yourself.

So you think that you're a failure, do you? Well, you probably are. What's wrong with that? In the first place, if you've any sense at all you must have learned by now that we pay just as dearly for our triumphs as we do for our defeats. Go ahead and fail. But fail with wit, fail with grace, fail with style. 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.

Love easily confuses us because it is always in flux between illusion and substance, between memory and wish, between contentment and need.

You should never hesitate to trade your cow for a handful of magic beans.

Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature.

Our individuality is all, all, that we have. There are those who barter it for security, those who repress it for what they believe is the betterment of the whole society, but blessed in the twinkle of the morning star is the one who nurtures it and rides it in, in grace and love and wit, from peculiar station to peculiar station along life's bittersweet route.

There are two kinds of people in this world: Those who believe there are two kinds of people in this world and those who are smart enough to know better.

There are only two mantras, yum and yuck, mine is yum.

Curiosity, especially intellectual inquisitiveness, is what separates the truly alive from those who are merely going through the motions.

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