Robert Fulghum Quotes

Why isn't love easy?
I don't know. And the raccoons don't say.

But it does no good — solves nothing — to distance myself from the front lines of human need by using the mail as a safe shelter. I believe that serving the best ends of humanity means getting out in the middle of it just as it is, not staying home writing checks and thinking hopeful thoughts. The world does not need tourists who ride by in a bus clucking their tongues. The world as it is needs those who will love it enough to change it, with what they have, where they are. And you're damned right that's idealistic. No apology. When idealism goes into the trash as junk mail, we're finished.

Pardon me, but my father says that it is a lie that Americans have everything. You have no sheep, no goats, no trees, no oil, no vines, no wine, not even chickens. He asks, 'What kind of life is that?' He says, 'No wonder you don't sing or dance or recite poetry very often.

I get tired of hearing it's a crummy world and that people are no damned good. What kind of talk is that? I know a place in Payette, Idaho, where a cook and a waitress and a manager put everything they've got into laying a chicken-fried steak on you.

To get through this life and see it realistically poses a problem. There is a dark, evil, hopeless side to life that includes suffering, death, and ultimate oblivion as our earth falls into a dying sun. Nothing really matters. On the other hand, the best side of our humanity finds us determined to make life as meaningful as possible NOW; to defy our fate. Everything matters. Everything.

The leaves let go, the seeds let go, and I must let go sometimes, too, and cast my lot with another of nature’s imperfect but tenacious survivors.

The pig was so earnest. So sincere. So very “there.” The pig brought gravity and mythic import to this well-worn fairy tale.

We are as different from one another on the inside of our heads as we appear to be different from one another on the outside of our heads.

Wherever and however any one of us may be conceived, it is the same. We come into being in the arms of God.

Maybe we should develop a Crayola bomb as our next secret weapon. A happiness weapon. A beauty bomb. And every time a crisis developed, we would launch one. It would explode high in the air - explode softly - and send thousands, millions, of little parachutes into the air. Floating down to earth - boxes of Crayolas. And we wouldn't go cheap, either - not little boxes of eight. Boxes of sixty-four, with the sharpener built right in. With silver and gold and copper, magenta and peach and lime, amber and umber and all the rest. And people would smile and get a little funny look on their faces and cover the world with imagination.

The four of us are talking dancing, and laughing, and recalling the joys of being out on the floor and having that timeless feeling that comes from being caught up in the music. "Nobody should miss that," says Dave. On the face of it, Dave's family and I don't have a lot in common. They're Mormons and Republicans. I'm a Unitarian and a Democrat. When Dave was on the County Council, we were on different sides of some important issues. I grew up a Southern Baptist in Texas where dancing was a mortal sin in the eyes of Almighty God, but coffee was OK. Dave grew up a Latter Day Saint where dancing was considered righteous – but not coffee.
But . . . we're dancers. And laughers. That's a strong bond right there. And we're committed to being useful in our world. And if you love something, like dancing, and you pass it on, like Dave and his wife do, you've been very useful by my standards. Dancing is a lifetime, equal opportunity sport.
And I will never drive by Dave's garage again without having the finest feelings for the man and his wife and mother who are inside taking good care of their corner of this world. They've added an important dimension to the lives of the young people of their town — that lightness of being that belongs to dancers.

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

Live a balanced life — learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.

Life is — and we are — byproducts of combustion. Imagination turned to form and finally, memory.

Does the giraffe know what he's for? Or care? Or even think about his place in things? A giraffe has a black tongue twenty-seven inches long and no vocal cords. A giraffe has nothing to say. He just goes on giraffing.