Tom Robbins Quotes

Funny how we think of romance as always involving two, when the romance of solitude can be ever so much more delicious and intense.

How can one person be more real than any other? Well some people do hide and others seek. Maybe those who are hiding — escaping encounters, avoiding surprises, protecting their property, ignoring their fantasies, restricting their feelings, sitting out the Pan pipe hootchy-kootch of experience — maybe those people, people who won't talk to rednecks, or if they're rednecks won't talk to intellectuals, people who are afraid to get their shoes muddy or their noses wet, afraid to eat what they crave, afraid to drink Mexican water, afraid to bet a long shot to win, afraid to hitchhike, jaywalk, honky-tonk, cogitate, osculate, levitate, rock it, bop it, sock it, or bark at the moon, maybe such people are simply inauthentic, and maybe the jackleg humanist who says differently is due to have his tongue fried on the hot slabs of liars hell. Some folks hide and some folks seek,and seeking when its mindless, neurotic, desperate, or pusillanimous, can be a form of hiding. But there are folks who want to know and aren't afraid to look, and won't turn tail should they find it — and if they never do, they'll have a good time anyway, because nothing, neither the terrible truth, nor the absence of it, is going to cheat them out of one honest breath of earth's sweet gas.

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

When we're incomplete, we're always searching for somebody to complete us. When, after a few years or a few months of a relationship, we find that we're still unfulfilled, we blame our partners and take up with somebody more promising. This can go on and on — series polygamy — until we admit that while a partner can add sweet dimensions to our lives, we, each of us, are responsible for our own fulfillment. Nobody else can provide it for us, and to believe otherwise is to delude ourselves dangerously and to program for eventual failure every relationship we enter.

Not naive, Conch Shell had corrected him, "He simply has not been taught to fear the things you fear."

Her surname resembled a line from an optometrist's examination chart.

If we're ever going to get the world back on a natural footing, back in tune with natural rhythyms, if we're going to nurture the Earth and protect it and have fun with it and learn from it — which is what mothers do with their children — then we've got to put technology (an aggressive masculine system) in its proper place, which is that of a tool to be used sparingly, joyfully, gently and only in the fullest cooperation with nature. Nature must govern technology, not the other way around.

Society had a crime problem. It hired cops to attack crime. Now society has a cop problem.

Are you aware that rushing toward a goal is a sublimated death wish? It's no coincidence we call them 'deadlines'.

All Uncle Larry is saying is that individuals have to accept responsibility for their own bad choices. If every time we choose a turd, society, at great expense, simply allows us to redeem it for a pepperoni, then not only will we never learn to make smart choices, we will also surrender the freedom to choose, because a choice without consequences is no choice at all. Maybe it boils down to the premium we want to place on liberty.

How can one person be more real than any other? Well, some people do hide and others seek. Maybe those who are in hiding - escaping encounters, avoiding surprises, protecting their property, ignoring their fantasies, restricting their feelings, sitting out the pan pipe hootchy-kootch of experience - maybe those people, people who won't talk to rednecks, or if they're rednecks won't talk to intellectuals, people who're afraid to get their shoes muddy or their noses wet, afraid to eat what they crave, afraid to drink Mexican water, afraid to bet a long shot to win, afraid to hitchhike, jaywalk, honky-tonk, cogitate, osculate, levitate, rock it, bop it, sock it, or bark at the moon, maybe such people are simply inauthentic, and maybe the jacklet humanist who says differently is due to have his tongue fried on the hot slabs of Liar's Hell. Some folks hide, and some folk's seek, and seeking, when it's mindless, neurotic, desperate, or pusillanimous can be a form of hiding. But there are folks who want to know and aren't afraid to look and won't turn tail should they find it - and if they never do, they'll have a good time anyway because nothing, neither the terrible truth nor the absence of it, is going to cheat them out of one honest breath of Earth's sweet gas.

She needed help, but God was in a meeting whenever she rang.

Although I participated enthusiastically in the sixties psychedelic revolution, and tried to mimic it – its trappings, its mythology, its silliness, its profundity – in print in my first novel, I had nothing to do with its creation. Rather, it was the confluence of two disparate elements – acute socio-political dissatisfaction and pharmacological neo-shamanism – that precipitated it; and it was democracy, as much as ferocious opposition from both the right-wing and left-wing establishments, that caused it to eventually unravel. Democracy? Yep, oddly enough. The counterculture light was so bright it began to attract moths (people who sadly were not intellectually or spiritually prepared to meaningfully assimilate transformative multi-dimensional data streams from hyperspace) and stinging stink bugs (the thugs that invariably invade every utopia) in such great numbers that they eventually crowded out the butterflies (the educated middle class truth-seekers who switched on the light in the first place). That's an oversimplification, of course, but it's good to bear in mind that like it or not, enlightenment has always been, even in a golden age, pretty much limited to an elite. In America, the relatively finite psychedelic culture was shoved aside by the burgeoning boogie culture, whose drugs of choice were booze, speed, and cocaine; and whose goal was not to attain spiritual bliss, deeper understanding, or an end to war and repression but rather to get thoroughly fucked up.

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 or an end. Camus clearly got up on the wrong side of the bed, and Robbins must have forgotten to set the alarm. There is only one serious question. And that question is: "Who knows how to make love stay?".