Robert Fulghum Quotes

Circumstances, luck, mutual need, affection and time played a part. No relationships were made in heaven. They were made because living things were looking for good company. And when you found good company, you valued it deeply and were responsible for its up-keep and well-being.

Love the battle between chaos and imagination. Remember: Acting is living truthfully in imaginary circumstances. Remember: Acting is the way to live the greatest number of lives. Remember: Acting is the same as real life, lived intentionally. Never forget: The Fruit is out on the end of the limb. Go there.

I and you-We are infinate, rich, large, contradictory, living, breathing miracles-free human beings, children of God and the everlasting universe. That's what we do.

If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire, then you got a problem. Everything else is inconvenience.

I often say that I don't worry about the meaning of life — I can't handle that big stuff. What concerns me is the meaning in life — day by day, hour by hour, while I'm doing whatever it is that I do. What counts is not what I do, but how I think about myself while I'm doing it.

When I’m finished, I have a sense of accomplishment. A sense of competence. I am good at doing the laundry. At least that. And it’s a religious experience, you know. Water, earth, fire — polarities of wet and dry, hot and cold, dirty and clean. The great cycles — round and round — beginning and end — Alpha and Omega, amen. I am in touch with the GREAT SOMETHING-OR-OTHER. For a moment, at least, life is tidy and has meaning.

If I don't have time to live my life well the first time, when am I going to find the time to go back and live it over?

We could learn a lot from crayons; some are sharp, some are pretty, some are dull, while others bright, some have weird names, but they all have learned to live together in the same box.

About winning and losing: It isn't important, what really counts is how you play the game. About playing the game: PLAY TO WIN!

The grass is not, in fact, always greener on the other side of the fence. No, not at all. Fences have nothing to do with it. The grass is greenest where it is watered. When crossing over fences, carry water with you and tend the grass wherever you may be.

Ignorance and power and pride are a deadly mixture, you know.

Everything looks better at a distance. If you made it up, you have to live it down. Everything is compost. There is no they — only us. It’s a mistake to believe everything you think. You can get used to anything. Sometimes things are just as bad as they seem. It helps if you always have somebody to kiss goodnight.

The kindergarten essay got into that underground press we all belong to where something just sort of has a life of its own and moves around and it gets on refrigerators and in the work place and people copy it... I was a minister in the Unitarian church at the time and teaching and I was ready to stop that and do the next phase of my life. So I had quit both those jobs and I was all set up with my studio in Seattle when this other horse came riding by … I'm not a great writer and I'll never get the Nobel Prize or a Pulitzer Prize but I've won the refrigerator door award. And you don't see Faulkner on people's refrigerator.

It wasn’t in books. It wasn’t in a church. What I needed to know was out there in the world.

Above all, if what you've done is stupid, but it works, it ain't stupid.