Quotes by Tom Robbins

“I believe in nothing, everything is sacred. I believe in everything, nothing is sacred.”

“Our Similarities bring us to a common ground; Our Differences allow us to be fascinated by each other”

“This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle; wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it.”

“Logic only gives man what he needs...Magic gives him what he wants.”

“As unrefined and basic as an animals emotional equipment may be, it is not insensitive to freedom. Somewhere in the archives of crudest instinct is recorded the truth that it is better to be endangered and free than captive and comfortable.”

“I admit that I aint no angel, I admit that I aint no saint-- Im selfish and Im cruel and Im blind. If I exorcise my devils, well my angels may leave too. When they leave theyre so hard to find...”

“Life isnt stable. Stability is unnatural. The only stable society is the police state. You can have a free society or you can have a stable society. You cant have both. Take your choice. As for me, Ill choose a free, organic society over a rigid, artificial society any day.”

“It is easier to play around with a mans wife than with his cliches.”

“Beauty is a bit of a bore.”

“What she didnt understand, she being spiritual and seeing religion as spirit, was that it took religion to save me from the spirit world, from orbiting the earth like Lucifer and the angels, that it took nothing less than touching the thread off the misty interstates and eating Christ himself to make me mortal man again and let me inhabit my own flesh and love her in the morning.”

“Marx was wrong; jealousy and pride, emotional forces, are just as responsible as hunger and necessity for our actions; they explain the whole of History, and the initial fall of man.”

“True stability results when presumed order and presumed disorder are balanced. A truly stable system expects the unexpected, is prepared to be disrupted, waits to be transformed.”

“I paint paintings because I cant get the experience in any other way but there are many more experiences that are equally satisfying to me and equally inept at answering all my questions, but hover in exactitude in describing themselves and defying me to define their logic.”

“We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to.”

“We must free the slaves or be ourselves subdued. The slaves were undeniably a element of strength to those who had their service, and we must decide whether that element should be with us or against us. Emancipation, will strike at the heart of the rebellion. Said to Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles.”

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

“Now tequila may be the favoured beverage of outlaws but that doesnt mean it gives them preferential treatment. In fact, tequila probably has betrayed as many outlaws as has the central nervous system and dissatisfied wives. Tequila, scorpion honey, harsh dew of the doglands, essence of Aztec, crema de cacti; tequila, oily and thermal like the sun in solution; tequila, liquid geometry of passion; Tequila, the buzzard god who copulates in midair with the ascending souls of dying virgins; tequila, firebug in the house of good taste; O tequila, savage water of sorcery, what confusion and mischief your sly, rebellious drops do generate!”

“The afternoon passed more slowly than a walnut-sized kidney stone.”

“Ideas are mallable and unstable; they not only can be misused, they invite misuse---and the better the idea the more volatile it is. Thats because only the better ideas turn into dogma, and it is by this process whereby a fresh, stimulating, humanly helpful idea is changed into robot dogma that is deadly. The problem starts at the secondary level, not with the originator or developer of the idea, but with the people who are attracted to it, until the last nail breaks, and who invariably lack the overview, flexibility, imagination, and, most importantly, sense of humor to maintain it in the spirit in which it was hatched. Ideas are made by masters, dogmas by disciples, and the Buddha is always killed on the road.”

“The sky was the color of Edgar Allan Poes pajamas.”