Quotes by Tom Robbins

“The bottom line is that (a) people are never perfect, but love can be, (b) that is the one and only way that the mediocre and vile can be transformed, and (c) doing that makes it that. We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating”

“Philosophers have argued for centuries about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but materialists have always known it depends on whether they are jitterbugging or dancing cheek to cheek”

“When life demands more of people than they demand of life - as is ordinarily the case - what results is a resentment of life almost as deep-seated as the fear of death”

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

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

Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just wont adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honor and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet. That would mean that security is out of the question. The words make and stay become inappropriate. My love for you has no strings attached. I love you for free.

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.

Who knows how to make love stay?1. Tell love you are going to Juniors Deli on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn to pick up a cheesecake, and if loves stays, it can have half. It will stay.2. Tell love you want a momento of it and obtain a lock of its hair. Burn the hair in a dime-store incense burner with yin/yang symbols on three sides. Face southwest. Talk fast over the burning hair in a convincingly exotic language. Remove the ashes of the burnt hair and use them to paint a moustache on your face. Find love. Tell it you are someone new. It will stay.3. Wake love up in the middle of the night. Tell it the world is on fire. Dash to the bedroom window and pee out of it. Casually return to bed and assure love that everything is going to be all right. Fall asleep. Love will be there in the morning.

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 and an end.Camus clearly got up on the wrong side of bed, and Robbins must have forgotten to set the alarm.There is only one serious question. And that is: Who knows how to make love stay?Answer me that and I will tell you whether or not to kill yourself.

Our lives are not as limited as we think they are; the world is a wonderfully weird place; consensual reality is significantly flawed; no institution can be trusted, but love does work; all things are possible; and we all could be happy and fulfilled if we only had the guts to be truly free and the wisdom to shrink our egos and quit taking ourselves so damn seriously.

There are many things worth living for, a few things worth dying for, and nothing worth killing for.

Our individuality is all, all, that we have. There are those who barter it for security, those who repress it for what they believe is the betterment of the whole society, but blessed in the twinkle of the morning star is the one who nurtures it and rides it in, in grace and love and wit, from peculiar station to peculiar station along lifes bittersweet route.

In the haunted house of life, art is the only stair that doesnt creak.

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

Often, moreover, it is...that aspect of our being that society finds eccentric, ridiculous, or disagreeable, that holds our sweet waters, our secret well of happiness, the key to our equanimity in malevolent climes.

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

There are two kinds of people in this world: Those who believe there are two kinds of people in this world and those who are smart enough to know better.

Are You Ready for New Urban Fragrances?Yeah, I guess Im ready, but listen:Perfume is a disguise. Since the middle ages, we have worn masks of fruit and flowers in order to conceal from ourselves the meaty essence of our humanity. We appreciate the sexual attractant of the rose, the ripeness of the orange, more than we honor our own ripe carnality.Now today we want to perfume our cities, as well; to replace their stinging fumes of disturbed fossils sleep with the scent of gardens and orchards. Yet, humans are not bees any more than they are blossoms. If we must pull an olfactory hood over our urban environment, let it be of a different nature.I want to travel on a train that smells like snowflakes.I want to sip in cafes that smell like comets.Under the pressure of my step, I want the streets to emit the precise odor of a diamond necklace.I want the newspapers I read to smell like the violins left in pawnshops by weeping hobos on Christmas Eve.I want to carry luggage that reeks of the neurons in Einsteins brain.I want a citys gases to smell like the golden belly hairs of the gods.And when I gaze at a televised picture of the moon, I want to detect, from a distance of 239,000 miles, the aroma of fresh mozzarella.

I believe in political solutions to political problems. But mans primary problems arent political; theyre philosophical. Until humans can solve their philosophical problems, theyre condemned to solve their political problems over and over and over again. Its a cruel, repetitious bore.

Faith is believing in something you know isnt true.