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Dip A Slice Of Bread In Batter. That's September: Yellow, Gold, Soft And Sticky. Fry The Bread. Now You Have October: Chewier, Drier, Streaked With Browns. The Day In Question Fell Somewhere In The Middle Of The French Toast Process.

-Tom Robbins

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Dip A Slice Of

Tom Robbins

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Dip A Slice Of Bread In Batter. That's September: Yellow, Gold, Soft And Sticky. Fry The Bread. Now You Have October: Chewier, Drier, Streaked With Browns. The Day In Question Fell Somewhere In The Middle Of The French Toast Process.

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When Humans Were Young, They Were Pushed Around In Strollers. When They Were Old, They Were Pushed Around In Wheelchairs. In Between, They Were Just Pushed Around.

People Of Ze Wurl, Relax!

The Principal Difference Between An Adventurer And A Suicide Is That The Adventurer Leaves Himself A Margin Of Escape (the Narrower The Margin The Greater The Adventure)

I Do Not Know Why The Dead Do Not Come Back To Life. Perhaps Death Is So Wonderful, In Ways We Cannot Comprehend, That They Prefer It Over And Above Their Friends And Loved Ones, Although I Am Inclined To Doubt That Be The Case.

Writing A Novel Is Not So Much A Project As A Journey, A Voyage, An Adventure.

White Folks Have Controlled New Orleans With Money And Guns, Black Folks Have Controlled It With Magic And Music, And Although There Has Been A Steady Undercurrent Of Mutual Admiration, An Intermingling Of Cultures Unheard Of In Any Other American City, South Or North; Although There Has Prevailed A Most Joyous And Fascinating Interface, Black Anger And White Fear Has Persisted, Providing The Ongoing, Ostensibly Integrated Fete Champetre With Volatile And Sometimes Violent Idiosyncrasies.

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.

To Emphasize The Afterlife Is To Deny Life. To Concentrate On Heaven Is To Create Hell.

But The Center Can Be A Harmful Place For One Who Has Lived So Long On The Edge.... Normality Is The Great Neurosis Of Civilization.

Magic Things Are Fond Of Deceptions.

My Personal Motto Has Always Been: Joy In Spite Of Everything. Not Just [mindless] Joy, But Joy In Spite Of Everything. Recognizing The Inequities And The Suffering And The Corruption And All That But Refusing To Let It Rain On My Parade. And I Advocate This To Other People.

As Expected, You Get His Machine. Someday, Even The "call Of Nature" Will Be Answered By A Machine.

Our Purpose Is To Consciously, Deliberately Evolve Towards A Wiser, More Liberated And Luminous State Of Being.

You Have To Eat Your Technique. Digest It. It's In Your Blood, But You're Not Concerned With It Anymore.

The Female Characters In My Books Tend To Be Independent, Frisky, Spunky, Witty, Emotionally Strong, Erotically Daring, Spiritually Oriented And Intellectually Generous; In Short, The Kind Of Women I Admire In Real Life.

We Only Rise Above Mediocrity When There's Something At Stake. P. 174

You've Heard Of People Calling In Sick. You May Have Called In Sick A Few Times Yourself. But Have You Ever Thought About Calling In Well? It'd Go Like This: You'd Get The Boss On The Line And Say, "listen, I've Been Sick Ever Since I Started Working Here, But Today I'm Well And I Won't Be In Anymore." Call In Well.

Switters Was Actually Quite Fond Of Seattle's Weather, And Not Merely Because Of It's Ambivalence. He Liked It's Subtle, Muted Qualities And The Landscape That Those Qualities Encouraged If Not Engendered: Vistas That Seemed To Have Been Sketched With A Sumi Brush Dipped In Quicksilver And Green Tea. It Was Fresh, It Was Clean, It Was Gently Primal, And Mystically Suggestive.

I Went To A Large Consolidated School In Appalachia. And I Wrote The Story When I Was In The Second Grade And I Took It Up To The Third Floor To The School Newspaper Office That Was Written And Edited By Juniors And Seniors.

Most Americans Pay Lip Service To The Idea Of Freedom, But Can't Handle Real Freedom.

Here's An Idea: Let's Get Over Ourselves, Buy A Cherry Pie, And Go Fall In Love With Life.

Falling In Love

You Wonder If God Doesn't Have An Answering Machine To Screen Out The Prayers Of The Venal And The Boring? And In Which Category Has He Placed You?

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.

If Little Else, The Brain Is An Educational Toy.

The Human Race Has Always Defined Itself Through Narration. That Isn't Going To Change Just Because We've Gone Electronic. What Is Changing Is That Now We're Allowing Corporations To Tell Our Stories For Us.

Time Passed. Art Came Off The Walls And Became Rituals. Ritual Became Religion. Religion Spawned Science. Science Led To Big Business. And Big Business, If It Continues On Its Present, Mindless Trajectory, Could Land Those Lucky Enough To Survive Its Ultimate Legacy Back Into Caves Again.

In The Beginning Was The Thing. And One Thing Led To Another.

The Middle Ages Hangs Over History's Belt Like A Beer Belly. It Is Too Late Now For Aerobic Dancing Or Cottage Cheese Lunches To Reduce The Middle Ages. History Will Have To Wear Size 48 Shorts Forever.

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.

Life And Change

Make Things Happen

I Removed The Freeway From Its Temporal Context. Overpasses, Cloverleafs, Exit Ramps Took On The Personality Of Mayan Ruins For Me. Without Destination, Without Cessation, My Run Was Often Silent And Empty; There Were No Increments, No Arbitrary Graduations Reducing Time To Functional Units. I Abstracted And Purified.

Funny How We Think Of Romance As Always Involving Two, When The Romance Of Solitude Can Be Ever So Much More Delicious And Intense.

Death Is Simple. Life Is Messy. Give Me Life, The More Complicated The Better.

When A Man Confines An Animal In A Cage, He Assumes Ownership Of That Animal. But An Animal Is An Individual; It Cannot Be Owned. When A Man Tries To Own An Individual, Whether That Individual Be Another Man, An Animal Or Even A Tree, He Suffers The Psychic Consequences Of An Unnatural Act.

I Go Into A Gallery Or Museum, And I Realize That I Don't Have To Formulate Any Opinions If I Don't Want To. I Don't Have To Think This Thing Through And Write About It At Any Great Length. I Can Think About It If I Want To; If Not, I Can Just Walk Out. So I Can Enjoy Painting Really A Lot More Than I Could When I Had That Sort Of Pressure.

There Is A Comfort In Conformity, A Security In Control, That Is Appealing. There Is A Thrill In Domination, And We Are All Secretly Attracted To Violence.

The Enemy Is The Tyranny Of The Dull Mind.

We're Making It Up. The World, The Universe, Life, Reality. Especially Reality.

Religion Is Not Merely The Opium Of The Masses, It's The Cyanide.

And It Rained A Screaming. And It Rained A Rawness. And It Rained A Plasma. And It Rained A Disorder.

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 Life's Bittersweet Route.

Birth And Death Were Easy. It Was Life That Was Hard.

Life Is Hard If You Think It's Hard.

How We Shape Our Understanding Of Others' Lives Is Determined By What We Find Memorable In Them, And That In Turn Is Determined Not By Any Potentially Accurate Overview Of Another's Personality But Rather By The Tension And Balance That Exist In Our Daily Relationships.

If Kissing Is Man's Greatest Invention, Then Fermentation And Patriarchy Compete With The Domestication Of Animals For The Distinction Of Being Man's 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 You Want Your Tree To Produce Plenty O' Fruit, You've Got To Cut It Back From Time To Time. Same Thing With Your Neural Cells. Some People Might Call It Brain Damage. I Call It Prunin'.

'neotenty' Is 'remaining Young,' And It May Be Ironic That It Is So Little Known, Because Human Evolution Has Been Dominated By It.

Cultural Institutions By And Large Share One Primary Objective: Herd Control. Even When Ostensibly Benign, Their Propensity For Manipulation, Compartmentalization, Standardization And Suppression Of Potentially Disruptive Behavior Or Ideas, Has Served To Freeze The Evolution Of Consciousness Practically In Its Tracks.

Gods And Men Create One Another, Destroy One Another, Though By Different Means.

Our World Isn't Made Of Earth, Air And Water Or Even Molecules And Atoms; Our World Is Made Of Language.

In East Of Eden, John Steinbeck Wrote That There's Never Been A Great Creative Collaboration. When The Beatles First Burst On The Scene, I Thought They Were Proving Him Wrong. Later, We Learned That Lennon And Mccartney Had Each Composed Their Pop Masterpieces Separately, Individually. So It Goes.

Creative Collaboration

Like The Arthurian Years At Camelot, The Sixties Constituted A Breakthrough, A Fleeting Moment Of Glory, A Time When A Significant Little Chunk Of Humanity Briefly Realised Its Moral Potential And Flirted With Its Neurological Destiny, A Collective Spiritual Awakening That Flared Brilliantly Until The Barbaric And Mediocre Impulses Of The Species Drew Tight Once More The Curtains Of Darkness.

What Mattered To Abu Was The Music Of The Sentence. 'a Shadow Does Not Belong To The Object That Casts It.' To Abu, It Was A Little Poem. And In General, It Was The Poetics, The Music Of Things That Tossed His Confetti.

Salvation Is For The Feeble, That's What I Think. I Don't Want Salvation, I Want Life, All Of Life, The Miserable As Well As The Superb.

A Lot Of My Work Comes From What In Asia Is Called The 'mind Of Wonder.' There Is Not A Lot Of 'mind Of Wonder' Writing In Contemporary Western Literature. I Think That's What Appeals To The Readers Who Are My Fans.

The Inability To Correctly Perceive Reality Is Often Responsible For Humans' Insane Behavior. And Every Time They Substitute An All-purpose, Sloppy Slang Word For The Words That Would Accurately Describe An Emotion Or A Situation, It Lowers Their Reality Orientations, Pushes Them Farther From Shore, Out Onto The Foggy Waters Of Alienation And Confusion.

One Of My Books Is A Hallucinogen, An Aphrodisiac, A Mood Elevator, An Intellectual Garage Door Opener, And A Metaphysical Trash Compactor. They'll Do Everything Except Rotate Your Tires.

If You're Honest, You Sooner Or Later Have To Confront Your Values. Then You're Forced To Separate What Is Right From What Is Merely Legal. This Puts You Metaphysically On The Run. America Is Full Of Metaphysical Outlaws.

Don't Confuse Symmetry With Balance.

Growing Up Is A Trap," Snapped Dr. Robbins. "when They Tell You To Shut Up, They Mean Stop Talking. When They Tell You To Grow Up, They Mean Stop Growing. Reach A Nice Level Plateau And Settle There, Predictable And Unchanging, No Longer A Threat.

Rivers Are The Primal Highways Of Life. From The Crack Of Time, They Had Borne Men's Dreams, And In Their Lovely Rush To Elsewhere, Fed Our Wanderlust, Mimicked Our Arteries, And Charmed Our Imaginations In A Way The Static Pond Or Vast And Savage Ocean Never Could.

The Ultimate End Of Any Ideology Is Totalitarianism.

All Dreams Continue In The Beyond.

According To Hindu Cosmology, We're In The Kali Yuga, A Dark Period When The Cow Of History Is Balanced Precariously On One Leg, Soon To Topple. Then There Are Our New-age Friends Who Believe That This December We're In For A Global Cage-rattling Which, Once The Dust Has Settled, Will Usher In A Great Spiritual Awakening. Most Of This Apocalyptic Noise Appears To Be Just Wishful Thinking On The Part Of People Who Find Life Too Messy And Uncertain For Comfort, Let Alone For Serenity And Mirth.

The Devil Doesn't Make Us Do Anything. The Devil, For Example, Doesn't Make Us Mean. Rather, When We're Mean, We Make The Devil. Literally. Our Actions Create Him. Conversely, When We Behave With Compassion, Generosity, And Grace, We Create God In The World.

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.

Western Civilization Was Declining Too Fast For Comfort, But Too Slowly To Be Very Exciting.

If Little Else, The Brain Is An Educational Toy. Why It May Be A Frustrating Play Thing - One Whose Finer Points Recede Just When You Think You Are Mastering Them - It Is Nonetheless Perpetually Fascinating, Frequently Surprising, Occasionally Rewarding, And It Comes Already Assembled. [...] Alas! The Brain Is A Toy That Plays Games Of Its Own. Its Very Most Favorite Game Is The One-thing-leads-to-another Game.

Political Activism Is Seductive Because It Seems To Offer The Possibility That One Can Improve Society, Make Things Better, Without Going Through The Personal Ordeal Of Rearranging One's Perceptions And Transforming One's Self.

The Japanese Have Become So Smitten With The Western Condiment - Its Texture As Silky As A Kimono, Its Tang As Understated As The Tang Of Zen - That Today They Have A Word For Mayonnaise Junkie: Mayora.

Equality Is Not In Regarding Different Things Similarly, Equality Is In Regarding Different Things Differently.

The Mission Of The Artist In An Over-technologi Zed Society, Is To Call The Old Magic Back To Life.

Every Day Is Judgement Day. Always Has Been. Always Will Be.

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.

The Price Of Self-destiny Is Never Cheap, And In Certain Situations It Is Unthinkable. But To Achieve The Marvelous, It Is Precisely The Unthinkable That Must Be Thought.

I Don't Have A Very High Opinion, Actually, Of The World Of Criticism - Or The Practice Of Criticism. I Think I Admire Art Criticism, Criticism Of Painting And Sculpture, Far More Than I Do That Of Say Films And Books, Literary Or Film Criticism. But I Don't Much Like The Practice. I Think There Are An Awful Lot Of Bad People In It.

Our Similarities Bring Us To A Common Ground; Our Differences Allow Us To Be Fascinated By Each Other.

You Have Taught Us Much. Come With Us And Join The Movement." "this Movement Of Yours, Does It Have Slogans?" Inquired The Chink. "right On!" They Cried. And They Quoted Him Some. "your Movement, Does It Have A Flag?" Asked The Chink. "you Bet!" And They Described Their Emblem. "and Does Your Movement Have Leaders?" "great Leaders." "then Shove It Up Your Butts," Said The Chink. "i Have Taught You Nothing.

Dip A Slice Of Bread In Batter. That's September: Yellow, Gold, Soft And Sticky. Fry The Bread. Now You Have October: Chewier, Drier, Streaked With Browns. The Day In Question Fell Somewhere In The Middle Of The French Toast Process.

You Know What The Game Of Golf Is, Don't You? It's Basketball For People Who Can't Jump And Chess For People Who Can't Think.

To Be Or Not To Be Isn't The Question. The Question Is How To Prolong Being.

What We Have Here Is An Unexpected Touchdown On The Runway Of The Heart.

Still Life With Woodpecker

Society In General Maintains Such A Vested Interested In Its Cozy Habits And Solidified Belief Systems That It Had Rather Die - Or Kill - Than Entertain Change. Consider How Threatened Religious Fundamentalists Of All Faiths Remain To This Day By Science In General And Darwin In Particular.

Should One Be Shallow Enough To View Existence As A System Of Rewards And Punishments, One Soon Learns That We Pay As Dearly For Our Triumphs As We Do For Our Defeats.

Dreamily The Princess Stood Up. "i'm Not Sure If I Can Walk," She Said. "then I'll Carry You." "is That What Love Is?" "i No Longer Know What Love Is. A Week Ago I Had A Lot Of Ideas. What Love Is And How To Make It Stay. Now That I'm In Love, I Haven't A Clue. Now That I'm In Love, I'm Completely Stupid On The Subject.

I Travel In Gardens And Bedrooms, Basements And Attics, Around Corners, Through Doorways And Windows, Along Sidewalks, Over Carpets, Down Drainpipes, In The Sky, With Friends, Lovers, Children And Heros; Perceived, Remembered, Imagined, Distorted And Clarified.

My Comic Sense, Although Deliberately Americanized, Is, In Its Intent, Much Closer Related To The Crazy Wisdom Of Zen Monks And The Goofy Genius Of Taoist Masters Than It Is To, Say, The Satirical Gibes On Saturday Night Live. It Has Both A Literary And A Metaphysical Function.

There Is A Similarity Between Juggling And Composing On The Typewriter. The Trick Is, When You Spill Something, Make It Look Like A Part Of The Act.

Still Life With Woodpecker

Using Words To Describe Magic Is Like Using A Screwdriver To Cut Roast Beef.

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.

The Word Desire Suggests That There Is Something We Do Not Have. If We Have Everything Already, Then There Can Be No Desire, For There Is Nothing Left To Want. I Think That What The Buddha May Have Been Trying To Tell Us Is That We Have It All, Each Of Us, All The Time; Therefore, Desire Is Simply Unnecessary.

Normality Is The Great Neurosis Of Civilization.

Serious Reading Is Hardly A Social Activity And Every Halfway Serious Reader Is Perpetually Subject To A Form Of Coitus Interruptus. Family Members Or Friends Who Lack The Desire, The Courage, Or The Opportunity To Burst In On You When There's Some Indication That You Could Be Sexually Entwined Will Seldom Hesitate To Interject Themselves Between You And A Page, Even Though The Act Of Reading Is Often As Intimate And Intense As A Full-fledged Carnal Embrace.

Maybe What I Admired Most About John Steinbeck Is That He Never Mortgaged His 45-acre Heart For A Suite In An Ivory Tower.

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 Never Outline. I Don't Work From An Outline. I Have No Idea Where The Book Is Going. I Mean, Even Two-thirds Of The Way Through, I Don't Know How It's Going To End.

How Can You Admire A Human Who Consciously Embraces The Bland, The Mediocre, And The Safe Rather Than Risk The Suffering That Disappointment Can Bring?

Always Compare Yourself To The Best. Even If You Never Measure Up, It Can't Help But Make You Better.

Just Because You're Naked Doesn't Mean You're Sexy. Just Because You're Cynical Doesn't Mean You're Cool.

Love Is The Ultimate Outlaw.

To The Extent That This World Surrenders Its Richness And Diversity, It Surrenders Its Poetry; To The Extent That It Relinquishes Its Capacity To Surprise, It Relinquishes Its Music; To The Extent That It Loses Its Ability To Tolerate Ridiculous And Even Dangerous Exceptions, It Loses Its Grace.

Outlaws Are Can Openers In The Supermarket Of Life.

Still Life With Woodpecker

She Needed Help, But God Was In A Meeting Whenever She Rang.

Transformation, Liberation And Celebration Are The Themes Of All My Novels.

Above All, Have A Good Time. If You Aren’t Enjoying Writing It, You Can Hardly Expect Someone Else To Enjoy Reading It.

Employing Women As My Primary Protagonists Has Allowed Me To Step Outside Of Myself, To Distance Myself From My Own Personality, Far More Easily Than Were I To Look At Events From A Masculine Perspective.

There Were No Mail-order Catalogues In 1492. Marco Polo's Journal Was The Wish Book Of Renaissance Europe. Then, Columbus Sailed The Ocean Blue And Landed In Sears' Basement. Despite All The Indians On The Escalator, Columbus' Visit Came To Be Known As A "discovery.

A Hamburger Is An Icon Of Layered Circles, The Circle Being At Once The Most Spiritual And The Most Sensual Of Shapes.

We Are Seldom As Limited As We Think We Are.

The Gods Have Chosen To Entertain Me With Chronic Eyestrain Headaches. Very Poisonous Episodes. So I Don't Do A Lot Of Reading Anymore Except On Tape.

The Harsh Truth Is, Most Red-haired Men Look Like Blondes Who've Spoiled From Lack Of Refrigeration. They Look Like Brown-haired Men Who've Been Composted Out Behind The Barn. Yet That Same Pigmentation That On A Man Can Resemble Leaf Mold Or Junkyard Rust, A Woman Wears Like A Tiara Of Rubies.

Modern Romans Insisted That There Was Only One God, A Notion That Struck Alobar As Comically Simplistic. Worse, This Semitic Deity Was Reputed To Be Jealous (what Was There To Be Jealous Of If There Were No Other Gods?), Vindictive, And Altogether Foul-tempered. If You Didn't Serve The Nasty Fellow, The Romans Would Burn Your House Down. If You Did Serve Him, You Were Called A Christian And Got To Burn Other People's Houses Down.

Unhappiness Is The Ultimate Form Of Self-indulgence.

If There’s A Thing, A Scene, Maybe, An Image That You Want To See Real Bad, That You Need To See But It Doesn’t Exist In The World Around You, At Least Not In The Form That You Envision, Then You Create It So That You Can Look At It And Have It Around, Or Show It To Other People Who Wouldn’t Have Imagined It Because They Perceive Reality In A More Narrow, Predictable Way. And That’s It. That’s All An Artist Does.

There Is A Sense In Which A Painted Stick Is A Stick In Bloom. This Stick Points To The Hidden Face Of God. Sometimes It Points To You.

Hawaii Made The Mouth Of Her Soul Water.

We Use So Much Bad Language That It Forms A Barrier Between Ourselves And The Truth.

The Enemy Of The Black Is Not The White. The Enemy Of Capitalist Is Not Communist, The Enemy Of Homosexual Is Not Heterosexual, The Enemy Of Jew Is Not Arab, The Enemy Of Youth Is Not The Old, The Enemy Of Hip Is Not Redneck, The Enemy Of Chicano Is Not Gringo And The Enemy Of Women Is Not Men. We All Have The Same Enemy. The Enemy Is The Tyranny Of The Dull Mind. The Enemy Is Every Expert Who Practices Technocratic Manipulation, The Enemy Is Every Proponent Of Standardization And The Enemy Is Every Victim Who Is So Dull And Lazy And Weak As To Allow Himself To Be Manipulated And Standardized.

There Are Stories Still In Existence That I Wrote When I Was Five. However, I Did Not Get Published Until I Was Seven.

What We, Thanks To Jung, Call "synchronicity" (coincidence On Steroids), Buddhists Have Long Known As "the Interpenetration Of Realities." Whether It's A Natural Law Of Sorts Or Simply Evidence Of Mathematical Inevitability (an Infinite Number Of Monkeys Locked Up With An Infinite Number Of Typewriters Eventually Producing 'hamlet,' Not To Mention 'tarzan Of The Apes'), It Seems To Be As Real As It Is Eerie.

Reality Is Contradictory. And It's Paradoxical.

I Mean That Gods Do Not Limit Men. Men Limit Men.

This Is The Room Of The Wolfmother Wallpaper.

At Birth, We Emerge From Dream Soup. At Death, We Sink Back Into Dream Soup. In Between Soups, There Is A Crossing Of Dry Land. Life Is A Portage.

Does Koala Bear Poop Smell Like Cough Drops?

The Universe Does Not Have Laws. It Has Habits. And Habits Can Be Broken.

My Desire Was No Less Than Before, You Understand, But I No Longer Identified With The Desire. Perhaps That Is Why Taking Them Too Seriously, We Not Only Increase Our Susceptibility To Disappointment, We Actually Create A Climate Inhospitable To The Free And Easy Fulfillment Of Those Desires.

I've Always Assumed That Every Time A Child Is Born, The Divine Reenters The World. Okay? That's The Meaning Of The Christmas Story. And Every Time That Child's Purity Is Corrupted By Society, That's The Meaning Of The Crucifixion Story. Your Man Jesus Stands For That Child, That Pure Spirit, And As Its Surrogate, He's Being Born And Put To Death Again And Again, Over And Over, Every Time We Inhale And Exhale, Not Just At The Vernal Equinox And On The Twenty-fifth Of December.

In Technological Development, In Production Of Material Goods And Creature Comforts, We've Challenged The Very Gods, But Psychologically, Emotionally, We're Scarcely More Than Chimpanzees With Bulldozers, Baboons With Big Bombs.

Technological Development

Whatever Goes Wrong Can Be Used To Your Advantage, Providing It Goes Wrong Enough.

There's Birth, There's Death, And In Between There's Maintenance.

Don't Be Outraged, Be Outrageous.

Listen, I've Been Sick Ever Since I Started Working Here, But Today I'm Well And I Won't Be In Anymore.

There Are Apparently Few Limitations Either Of Time Or Space On Where The Psyche Might Journey And Only The Customs Inspector Employed By Our Own Inhibitions Restricts What It Might Bring Back When It Reenters The Home Country Of Everyday Consciousness.

Hardly A Pure Science, History Is Closer To Animal Husbandry Than It Is To Mathematics In That It Involves Selective Breeding. The Principal Difference Between The Husbandryman And The Historian Is That The Former Breeds Sheep Or Cows Or Such And The Latter Breeds (assumed) Facts. The Husbandryman Uses His Skills To Enrich The Future, The Historian Uses His To Enrich The Past. Both Are Usually Up To Their Ankles In Bullshit.

Virtually Every Advancement Made By Our Species Since Civilization First Peeked Out Of Its Nest Of Stone Has Been Initiated By Lone Individuals, Mavericks Who More Often Than Not Were Ignored, Mocked, Or Viciously Persecuted By Society And Its Institutions.

Sometimes One Gets The Feeling That Life Still Thinks It's Living In Paris In The '30s.

Those Who Shun The Whimsy Of Things Will Experience Rigor Mortis Before Death.

Philosophers Have Argued For Centuries About How Many Angels Can Dance On The Head Of A Pin, But Materialists Have Known All Along That It Depends On Whether They Are Jitterbugging Or Dancing Cheek To Cheek.

Perhaps The Most Terrible (or Wonderful) Thing That Can Happen To An Imaginative Youth, Aside From The Curse (or Blessing) Of Imagination Itself, Is To Be Exposed Without Preparation To The Life Outside His Or Her Own Sphere - The Sudden Revelation That There Is A There Out There.

Throughout Most Of Our History, Nothing - Not Flood, Famine, Plague, Or New Weapons - Has Endangered Humanity One-tenth As Much As The Narcissistic Ego, With Its Self-aggrandizing Presumptions And Its Hell-hound Spawn Of Fear And Greed.

Look, America Is No More A Democracy Than Russia Is A Communist State. The Governments Of The U.s. And Russia Are Practically The Same. There's Only A Difference Of Degree. We Both Have The Same Basic Form Of Government: Economic Totalitarianism. In Other Words, The Settlement To All Questions, The Solutions To All Issues Are Determined Not By What Will Make The People Most Healthy And Happy In Their Bodies And Their Minds But By Economics. Dollars Or Rubles.

In Seattle, I Soon Found That My Radical Ideas And Aesthetic Explorations - Ideas And Explorations That In Richmond, Virginia, Might Have Gotten Me Stoned To Death With Hush Puppies - Were Not Only Accepted But Occasionally Applauded.

I Believe In Political Solutions To Political Problems. But Man's Primary Problems Aren't Political; They're Philosophical. Until Humans Can Solve Their Philosophical Problems, They're Condemned To Solve Their Political Problems Over And Over And Over Again. It's A Cruel, Repetitious Bore.

The Divine Was Expansive, But Religion Was Reductive. Religion Attempted To Reduce The Divine To A Knowable Quantity With Which Mortals Might Efficiently Deal, To Pigeonhole It Once And For All So That We Never Had To Reevaluate It. With Hammers Of Cant And Spikes Of Dogma, We Crucified And Crucified Again, Trying To Nail To Our Stationary Altars The Migratory Light Of The World.

You Know A Trillion Times More About Art Than Me. But I’ve Learned That It Isn’t Necessary To Know All That Much. You Just Make What You Wanna See, Right? It’s A Game, Right? It’s Like Being Paid For Dreaming.

Eighty Percent Of Love Is Smell.

I Am Looking For The Novelists Whose Writing Is An Extension Of Their Intellect Rather Than An Extension Of Their Neurosis.

Some Folks Hide And Some Folks Seek, And Seeking When Its Mindless, Neurotic, Desperate, Or Pusillanimous, Can Be A Form Of Hiding.

Still Life With Woodpecker

I Don't Want To Give The Impression That I Hold Daily Conversations With My Household Appliances, Although My Toaster Is As Old As Drew Barrymore And Almost As Talented.

There's A Certain Buddhistic Calm That Comes From Having... Money In The Bank.

To An Artist A Metaphor Is As Real As A Dollar.

People Aren't Trees, So It Is False When They Speak Of Roots.

Live The Beauty Or Your Own Reality.

Of Course I'm Inconsistent! Only Logicians And Cretins Are Consistent!

Toys Are Made In Heaven, Batteries Are Made In Hell.

Rules Such As "write What You Know," And "show, Don't Tell," While Doubtlessly Grounded In Good Sense, Can Be Ignored With Impunity By Any Novelist Nimble Enough To Get Away With It. There Is, In Fact, Only One Rule In Writing Fiction: Whatever Works, Works.

You're Better Equipped For This World Than I Am," She Said. "i'm Always Trying To Change The World. You Know How To Live In It.

Minds Were Made For Blowing.

You Knows Dat In New Orleans Is Not Morning 'til Dee Sun Come Up.

Salvador Dali And Fifty Cents Will Get You A Cup Of Clock Melt.

My Paintings Are Very Strange - Large And Empty, Like Walls. Just The Opposite Of My Writing, Which Is Rich And Juicy.

And What Would Our Ideas Of God, Of Religion, Be Like If They Had Come To Us Through The Minds Of Women? Ever Think Of That?

The Most Useful Thing About Art Is It's Uselessness.

Me? I Stand For Uncertainty, Insecurity, Bad Taste, Fun, And Things That Go Boom In The Night.

I've Sucked Way Too Much Cement For This Year. Bad Juju Rising Off Them City Sidewalks. I Need To Babble With A Brook Or Two, Inhale Starlight, Make Friends With Some Trees.

Of The Seven Dwarfs, The Only One Who Shaved Was Dopey. That Should Tell Us Something About The Wisdom Of Shaving.

Zippers Are Primal And Modern At The Very Same Time. On The One Hand, Your Zipper Is Primitive And Reptilian, On The Other, Mechanical And Slick. A Zipper Is Where The Industrial Revolution Meets The Cobra Cult.

In Times Of Widespread Chaos And Confusion, It Has Been The Duty Of More Advanced Human Beings--artists, Scientists, Clowns And Philosophers--to Create Order. In Times Such As Ours, However, When There Is Too Much Order, Too Much Management, Too Much Programming And Control, It Becomes The Duty Of Superior Men And Women To Fling Their Favorite Monkey Wrenches Into The Machinery. To Relive The Repression Of The Human Spirit, They Must Sow Doubt And Disruption.

Being Able To Create Your Own Work, Being Able To Indulge Your Own Fantasies Is So Much Better Than Journalism, So Much More Fulfilling Than Journalism, To Me, That As Long As I Can Continue To Write Fiction, I Shall.

A Child's Mind Is Its Living Room; It's Is Going To Be Residing There For The Rest Of Its Earthly Existence.

True Stability Results When Presumed Order And Presumed Disorder Are Balanced.

Cries For Help Are Frequently Inaudible.

This Did Not Annoy Amanda For It Had Long Been Her Theory That Human Beings Were Invented By Water As A Device For Transporting Itself From One Place To Another.

When We Can Converse With The Animals, We Will Know The Change Is Halfway Here. When We Can Converse With The Forest, We Will Know The Change Has Come.

Well, Daddy, I Used To Believe That Artists Went Crazy In The Process Of Creating The Beautiful Works Of Art That Kept Society Sane. Nowadays, Though, Artists Make Intentionally Ugly Art That’s Only Supposed To Reflect Society Rather Than Inspire It. So I Guess We’re All Loony Together Now, Loony Rats In The Shithouse Of Commercialism.

Sometimes, Though, I Feel That Pushing Books Is A Whole Lot Like Pushing Medicine. Think Of Books As Pills. I Have Pills That Cure Ignorance And Pills That Cure Boredom. I Have Pills To Elevate Moods And Pills To Open People's Eyes To The Awful Truth: Uppers And Downers As They Were. I Sell Pills To Help People Find Themselves And Pills To Help Them Lose Themselves When They Require Escape From The Pressures And Anxieties Of Life In A Complex Society.

In The End, Perhaps We Should Simply Imagine A Joke; A Long Joke That's Continually Retold In An Accent Too Thick And Strange To Ever Be Completely Understood. Life Is That Joke My Friends. The Soul Is The Punch Line.

John Irving Once Told Me He Doesn't Start A Novel Until He Knows The Last Sentence. I Said, 'my God, Irving, Isn't That Like Working In A Factory?'

If Complexity Doesn't Beat You, Paradox Will.

There Are People In This World Who Can Wear Whale Masks And People Who Cannot, And The Wise Know To Which Group They Belong.

Should You Fail To Pilot Your Own Ship, Don't Be Surprised At What Inappropriate Port You Find Yourself Docked.

Finding Yourself

Death Is Impatient And Thoughtless. It Barges Into Your Room When You Are Right In The Middle Of Something, And It Doesn't Bother To Wipe Its Boots.

It Was Autumn, The Springtime Of Death. Rain Spattered The Rotting Leaves, And A Wild Wind Wailed. Death Was Singing In The Shower. Death Was Happy To Be Alive. The Fetus Bailed Out Without A Parachute. It Landed In The Sideline Astroturf, So Upsetting The Cheerleaders That For The Remained Of The Afternoon Their Rahs Were More Like Squeaks.

Who Knows How To Make Love Stay? Tell Love You Are Going To The Junior's Deli On Flatbush Avenue In Brooklyn To Pick Up A Cheesecake, And If Love Stays, It Can Have Half.

Success Can Eliminate As Many Options As Failure.

Success Failure

The Theme Of Corporate Stories (and Millions Drink Them In Every Day) Seldom Varies: To Be Happy You Must Consume, To Be Special You Must Conform. Absurd, Obviously, Yet Our Identities Have Become So Fragile, So Elusive, That We Seem Content To Let Advertisers Provide Us With Their Version Of Who We Are, To Let Them Recreate Us In Their Image: A Cookie-cutter Image Based On Market Research, Shallow Sociology, And Insidious Lies.

The Only Question Is How To Make Love Stay.

Faites De Beaux Rêves, Monsieur," She Called As She Put Out The Light. Switters Had Always Loved That Expression, "make Fine Dreams." In Contrast To The English, "have Sweet Dreams," The French Implied That The Sleeper Was Not A Passive Spectator, A Captive Audience, But Had Some Control Over And Must Accept Some Responsiblity For His Or Her Dreaming. Moreover, A "fine" Dream Had Much Wider Connotations Than A "sweet" One.

The Goal Of This Generation's Pioneers Should Be To Restrict Procreation And Limit Consumption. They Should Also Take Every Opportunity To Make Themselves Happy, Realizing That The Key To Self-generated Happiness (the Only Reliable Kind) Is The Refusal To Take Oneself Too Seriously.

Would You Complain Because A Beautiful Sunset Doesn't Have A Future Or A Shooting Star A Payoff? And Why Should Romance 'lead Anywhere'? Passion Isn't A Path Through The Woods. Passion Is The Woods.

The Sky Was The Color Of Edgar Allan Poe's Pajamas.

Get Yourself In That Intense State Of Being Next To Madness. Keep Yourself In, Not Necessarily A Frenzied State, But In A State Of Great Intensity. The Kind Of State You Would Be In Before Going To Bed With Your Partner. That Heightened State When You're In A Carnal Embrace: Time Stops And Nothing Else Matters. You Should Always Write With An Erection. Even If You're A Woman.

I Believe In Nothing, Everything Is Sacred. I Believe In Everything, Nothing Is Sacred.

People Feel Tremendous Pressure To Settle Down In Some Sort Of Permanent Space And Fill It Up With Stuff, But Deep Inside They Resent Those Structures, And They're Scared To Death Of That Stuff Because They Know It Controls Them And Restricts Their Movements.

Comedy Is Deemed Inferior To Tragedy Primarily Because Of The Social Prevalence Of Narcissistic Pathology. In Other Words People Who Are Too Self Important To Laugh At Their Own Frequently Ridiculous Behavior Have Vested Interest In Gravity Because It Supports Their Illusions Of Grandosity.

The Enemy Is Every Expert Who Practices Technocratic Manipulation, The Enemy Is Every Proponent Of Standardization And The Enemy Is Every Victim Who Is So Dull And Lazy And Weak As To Allow Himself To Be Manipulated And Standardized.

Violence Stinks No Matter Which Side Of It You're On. But Now And Then There's Nothing Left To Do But Hit The Other Person Over The Head With A Frying Pan.

There Are Two Lost Continents.... We Are One: The Lovers.

In The End What Will Prevail Is Your Passion Not Your Tale, For Love Is The Holy Grail.

It Is Better To Be Small, Colorful, Sexy, Careless, And Peaceful, Like The Flowers, Than Large, Conservative, Repressed, Fearful, And Aggressive, Like The Thunder Lizards; A Lesson, By The Way, That The Earth Has Yet To Learn.

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William Lyon Mackenzie King

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