Robert Fulghum Quotes

Anything not worth doing is worth not doing well.

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

I know what I really want for Christmas.
I want my childhood back.
Nobody is going to give me that. I might give at least the memory of it to myself if I try. I know it doesn't make sense, but since when is Christmas about sense, anyway? It is about a child, of long ago and far away, and it is about the child of now. In you and me. Waiting behind the door of or hearts for something wonderful to happen. A child who is impractical, unrealistic, simpleminded and terribly vulnerable to joy.

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.

Then he read the words of the scroll slowly, first in Japanese and then carefully translated into English:

'There is really nothing you must be.
And there is nothing you must do.
There is really nothing you must have.
And there is nothing you must know.
There is really nothing you must become.
However. It helps to understand
that fire burns, and when it rains,
the earth gets wet. . . .'

'Whatever, there are consequences. Nobody is exempt,' said the master.

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?

But love may have to be left off the exam. Most of us will never learn.

"Nobody goes "AAAAAAAGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!" when they sing it. Maybe because it puts the life adventure in such clear and simple terms. The small creature is alive and looks for adventure. Here's the drainpipe — a long tunnel going up toward some light. The spider doesn't even think about it — just goes. Disaster befalls it — rain, flood, powerful foces. And the spider is knocked down and out beyond where it started. Does the spider say, "To hell with that"? No. Sun comes out — clears things up — dries off the spider. And the small creature goes over to the drainpipe and looks up and thinks it really wants to know what is up there."

Everything I need to know... I learned in kindergarten.

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.

And sure, I know if you eat this way you'll die. So? If you don't eat this way you're still going to die. Why not die happy?

Remember, most of us got something for nothing the first time just by showing up here at birth. Now we have to qualify.

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.

If the dream is held close to the heart, and imagination is applied to what there is close at hand. Everything is still possible.

So you drive as far as you can, even when you can clearly read the sign. You want to think you are exempt, that it doesn’t apply to you. But it does. Life is still a dead end. And we still have a hard time believing it