Quotes by Tom Robbins

People write memoirs because they lack the imagination to make things up.

Our greatest human adventure is the evolution of consciousness. We are in this life to enlarge the soul, liberate the spirit, and light up the brain.

I have always been a romantic, one of those people who believes that a woman in pink circus tights contains all the secrets of the universe.

To some extent, Seattle remains a frontier metropolis, a place where people can experiment with their lives, and change and grow and make things happen.

The tricksters function is to break taboos, create mischief, stir things up. In the end, the trickster gives people what they really want, some sort of freedom.

“It is questionable, for that matter, whether success is an adequate response to life. Success can eliminate as many options as failure.”

“If New Orleans is not fully in the mainstream of culture, neither is it fully in the mainstream of time. Lacking a well-defined present, it lives somewhere between its past and its future, as if uncertain whether to advance or to retreat. Perhaps it is its perpetual ambivalence that is its secret charm. Somewhere between Preservation Hall and the Superdome, between voodoo and cybernetics, New Orleans listens eagerly to the seductive promises of the future but keeps at least one foot firmly planted in its history, and in the end, conforms, like an artist, not to the world but to its own inner being--ever mindful of its personal style.”

“To wit: actions, like sounds, divide the flow of time into beats.[...]The quality of a mans life depends on the rhyhmic structure he is able to impose upon the input and output of energy.”

“You knows dat in New Orleans is not morning til dee sun come up.”

“We modern human beings are looking at life, trying to make some sense of it; observing a reality that often seems to be unfolding in a foreign tongue--only weve all been issued the wrong librettos. For a text, were given the Bible. Or the Talmud or the Koran. Were given Time magazine, and Readers Digest, daily papers, and the six oclock news; were given schoolbooks, sitcoms, and revisionist histories; were given psychological counseling, cults, workshops, advertisements, sales pitches, and authoritative pronouncements by pundits, sold-out scientists, political activists, and heads of state. Unfortunately, none of these translations bears more than a faint resemblance to what is transpiring in the true theater of existence, and most of them are dangerously misleading. Were attempting to comprehend the spiraling intricacies of a magnificently complex tragicomedy with librettos that describe the barrom melodramas or kindergarten skits. And whens the last time you heard anybody bitch about it to the management?”

“Faith is believing in something you know isnt true.”

“Reality is subjective, and there’s an unenlightened tendency in this culture to regard something as ‘important’ only if ‘tis sober and severe. Sure and still you’re right about your Cheerful Dum, only they’re not so much happy as lobotomized. But your Gloomy Smart are just as ridiculous. When you’re unhappy, you get to pay a lot of attention to yourself. And you get to take yourself oh so very seriously. Your truly happy people, which is to say, your people who truly like themselves, they don’t think about themselves very much. Your unhappy person resents it when you try to cheer him up, because that means he has to stop dwellin’ on himself and start payin’ attention to the universe. Unhappiness is the ultimate form o’ self-indulgence.”

“When youre unhappy, you get to pay a lot of attention to yourself. And you get to take yourself oh so very seriously. Your truly happy people, which is to say, your people who truly like themselves, they dont think about themselves very much. Your unhappy person resents it when you try to cheer him up, because that means he has to stop dwellin on himself and start payin attention to the universe. Unhappiness is the ultimate form of self-indulgence.”

“Bones are patient. Bones never tire nor do they run away. When you come upon a man who has been dead many years, his bones will still be lying there, in place, content, patiently waiting, but his flesh will have gotten up and left him. Water is like flesh. Water will not stand still. It is always off to somewhere else; restless, talkative, and curious. Even water in a covered jar will disappear in time. Flesh is water. Stones are like bones. Satisfied. Patient. Dependable. Tell me, then, Alobar, in order to achieve immortality, should you emulate water or stone? Should you trust your flesh or your bones?”

“We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love.”

“Death is impatient and thoughtless. It barges into your room when you are right in the middle of something, and it doesnt bother to wipe its boots.”

“It is more important to be free than to be happy.”

“He was becoming unstuck, he was sure of that - his bones were no longer wrapped in flesh but in clouds of dust, in hummingbirds, dragonflies, and luminous moths - but so perfect was his equilibrium that he felt no fear. He was vast, he was many, he was dynamic, he was eternal.”

“Its more important to be free than to be happy.”

“When two people meet and fall in love, theres a sudden rush of magic. Magic is just naturally present then. We tend to feed on that gratuitous magic without striving to make any more. One day we wake up and find that the magic is gone. We hustle to get it back, but by then its usually too late, weve used it up. What we have to do is work like hell at making additional magic right from the start. Its hard work, but if we can remember to do it, we greatly improve our chances of making love stay.”