Quotes by Tom Robbins

Whenever a state or an individual cited insufficient funds as an excuse for neglecting this important thing or that, it was indicative of the extent to which reality had been distorted by the abstract lens of wealth. During periods of so-called economic depression, for example, societies suffered for want of all manner of essential goods, yet investigation almost invariably disclosed that there were plenty of goods available. Plenty of coal in the ground, corn in the fields, wool on the sheep. What was missing was not materials but an abstract unit of measurement called money. It was akin to a starving woman with a sweet tooth lamenting that she couldnt bake a cake because she didnt have any ounces. She had butter, flour, eggs, milk, and sugar, she just didnt have any ounces, any pinches, any pints. The loony legacy of money was that the arithmetic by which things were measured had become more valuable than the things themselves.

Thats the way the mind works: the brain is genetically disposed towards organization, yet if not controlled, will link even the most imagerial fragment to another on the flimsiest pretense and in the most freewheeling manner, as if it takes a kind of organic pleasure in creative association, without regards to logic or chronological sequence.

…he glanced over his shoulder at her, regarding her, as he often did before they made love, as if she were a lost continent about to be rediscovered.

Every nutritious sexual recipe calls for at least a pinch of love, and the fucks that rate four-star rankings from both gourmets and health-food nuts used cupfuls. Not that sex should be regarded as therapeutic or to be taken for medicinal purposes - only a dullard would hang such a millstone around the nibbled neck of a lay - but to approach sex carelessly, shallowly, with detachment and without warmth is to dine night after night in erotic greasy spoons. In time, ones palate will become insensitive, one will suffer (without knowing it) emotional malnutrition, the skin of the soul will fester with scurvy, the teeth of the heart will decay. Neither duration nor proclamation of commitment is necessarily the measure - there are ephemeral explosions of passion between strangers that make more erotic sense than many lengthy marriages, there are one-night stands in Jersey City more glorious than six-months affairs in Paris - but finally there is a commitment, however brief; a purity, however threatened; a vulnerability, however concealed; a generosity of spirit, however marbled with need; an honest caring, however singed by lust, that must be present if couplings are to be salubrious and not slow poison.

Its never too late to have a happy childhood.

It is as if the soul of the continent is weeping. Why does it weep? It weeps for the bones of the buffalo. It weeps for magic that has been forgotten. It weeps for the decline of poets.It weepsfor the black people who think like white people.It weepsfor the Indians who think like settlers.It weepsfor the children who think like adults.It weepsfor the free who think like prisoners.Most of all, it weepsfor the cowgirls who think like cowboys.

If kissing is mans greatest invention, then fermentation and patriarchy compete with the domestication of animals for the distinction of being mans worst folly, and no doubt the three combined long ago, the one growing out of the others, to foster civilization and lead Western humanity to its present state of decline.

If little else, the brain is an educational toy.The problem with possessing such an engaging toy is that other people want to play with it, too. Sometime theyd rather play with yours than theirs. Or they object if you play with yours in a different manner from the way they play with theirs. The result is, a few games out of a toy department of possibilities are universally and endlessly repeated. If you dont play some peoples game, they say that you have lost your marbles, not recognizing that, while Chinese checkers is indeed a fine pastime, a person may also play dominoes, chess, strip poker, tiddlywinks, drop-the-soap or Russian roulette with his brain.

All depression has its roots in self-pity, and all self-pity is rooted in people taking themselves too seriously.

Evidently, Id suffered an epiphany: the subconscious realization that when it comes to coolness, nothing the human race has ever invented is more cool than a book.

All depression has its roots in self-pity, and all self-pity is rooted in people taking themselves too seriously.At the time Switters had disputed her assertion. Even at seventeen, he was aware that depression could have chemical causes.The key word here is roots, Maestra had countered. The roots of depression. For most people, self-awareness and self-pity blossom simultaneously in early adolescence. Its about that time that we start viewing the world as something other than a whoop-de-doo playground, we start to experience personally how threatening it can e, how cruel and unjust. At the very moment when we become, for the first time, both introspective and socially conscientious, we receive the bad news that the world, by and large, doesnt give a rats ass. Even an old tomato like me can recall how painful, scary, and disillusioning that realization was. So, theres a tendency, then, to slip into rage and self-pity, which if indulged, can fester into bouts of depression.Yeah but Maestra - Dont interrupt. Now, unless someone stronger and wiser - a friend, a parent, a novelist, filmmaker, teacher, or musician - can josh us out of it, can elevate us and show us how petty and pompous and monumentally useless it is to take ourselves so seriously, then depression can become a habit, which, in tern, can produce a neurological imprint. Are you with me? Gradually, our brain chemistry becomes conditioned to react to negative stimuli in a particular, predictable way. One thingll go wrong and itll automatically switch on its blender and mix us that black cocktail, the ol doomsday daiquiri, and before we know it, were soused to the gills from the inside out. Once depression has become electrochemically integrated, it can be extremely difficult to philosophically or psychologically override it; by then its playing by physical rules, a whole different ball game. Thats why Switters my dearest, every time youve shown signs of feeling sorry for yourself, Ive played my blues records really loud or read to you from The Horses Mouth. And thats why when youve exhibited the slightest tendency toward self-importance, Ive reminded you that you and me - you and I: excuse me - may be every bit as important as the President or the pope or the biggest prime-time icon in Hollywood, but none of us is much more than a pimple on the ass-end of creation, so lets not get carried away with ourselves. Preventive medicine, boy. Its preventive medicine.But what about self-esteem?Heh! Self-esteem is for sissies. Accept that youre a pimple and try to keep a lively sense of humor about it. That way lies grace - and maybe even glory.

There was no burger so soggy that he would not eat it. No tequila so mean that he would not drink it. No car so covered with birdshit and rust that he would not drive it around town (and if it were a convertible, hed have the top down, even in rain, even in snow). There was no flag he would not desecrate, no true believer he would not mock, no song he wouldnt sign off-key, no dental appointment he wouldnt break, no child he wouldnt do tricks for, no old person he wouldnt help in from the cold, no moon he wouldnt lie under...

Meditation,” said his teacher, “hasn’t got a damn thing to do with anything, ‘cause all it has to do with is nothing. Nothingness. Okay? It doesn’t develop the mind, it dissolves the mind. Self-improvement? Forget it, baby. It erases the self. Throws the ego out on its big brittle ass. What good is it? Good for nothing. Excellent for nothing. Yes, Lord, but when you get down to nothing, you get down to ultimate reality. It’s then and exactly then that you’re sensing the true nature of the universe, you’re linked up with the absolute Absolute, son, and unless you’re content with blowing smoke up your butt all your life, that there’s the only place to be.

If I have been given any gift in this life, it’s my ability to live simultaneously in the rational world and the world of imagination.

Of the Seven Dwarfs, the only one who shaved was Dopey. That should tell us something about the wisdom of shaving.

The highest men are calm, silent and unknown...The true masters seldom reveal themselves, except in the vibrations the leave behind, and upon which the lesser gurus build their doctrines.

If you take any activity, any art, any discipline, any skill, take it andpush it as far as it will go, push it beyond where it has ever been before,push it to the wildest edge of edges, then you force it into the realm ofmagic.

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

Science gives man what he needs.But magic gives him what he wants.

The longer Ellen Cherry thought about it, the more convinced she became that the mission of the artist in an overtechnologized, overmasculinized society was to call the old magic back to life.Could it be done? Yeah, you pessimistic wimps, it could. Could she do it? Probably not, but she could give it a whirl.