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I'm An Outlaw, Not A Philosopher, But I Know This Much: There's Meaning In Everything, All Things Are Connected, And A Good Champagne Is A Drink.' Bernard Began To Sing Again. Timidly, Leigh-cheri Joined In. Between Verses, They Opened Another Bottle. The Popping Of Its Cork Echoed Throughout The Great Stone Chamber. Of The Three Billion People On Earth, Only Bernard And Leigh-cheri Heard The Popping Of The Cork And Its Echoes. Only Bernard And Leigh-cheri Passed Out Under The Tablecloth.

-Tom Robbins

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I'm An Outlaw, Not

Tom Robbins

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I'm An Outlaw, Not A Philosopher, But I Know This Much: There's Meaning In Everything, All Things Are Connected, And A Good Champagne Is A Drink.' Bernard Began To Sing Again. Timidly, Leigh-cheri Joined In. Between Verses, They Opened Another Bottle. The Popping Of Its Cork Echoed Throughout The Great Stone Chamber. Of The Three Billion People On Earth, Only Bernard And Leigh-cheri Heard The Popping Of The Cork And Its Echoes. Only Bernard And Leigh-cheri Passed Out Under The Tablecloth.

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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.

Cant You Understand That Romanticism Is No More An Enemy Of Science Than Mysticism Is? In Fact, Romanticism And Science Are Good For Each Other. The Scientist Keeps The Romantic Honest And The Romantic Keeps The Scientist Human.

Ultimately, The Roast Turkey Must Be Regarded As A Monument To Boomer's Love.

If By The Quarter Of The Twentieth Century Godliness Wasn’t Next To Something More Interesting Than Cleanliness, It Might Be Time To Reevaluate Our Notions Of Godliness.

It's Personal Freedom, Not Hundred Dollar Bills That Lights The Soul's Cigar.

There Is Little Difference Between The Zulu Warrior Who Smeared Bis Body With Lion's Fat And The Modern Woman Who Dabs Hers With Expensive Perfume. The One Was Trying To Acquire The Courage Of The King Of Beasts, The Other Is Attempting To Acquire The Irresistible Sexuality Of Flowers. The Underlying Principle Is The Same.

More Immediately, By Waxing Soulful You Will Have Granted Yourself The Possibility Of Ecstatic Participation In What The Ancients Considered A Divinely Animated Universe. And On A Day To Day Basis, Folks, It Doesn't Get Any Better Than That.

Hard Times And Funky Living Can Season The Soul, True Enough, But Joy Is The Yeast That Makes It Rise.

Love Makes The World Go 'round, It's True, But Lust Stops The World In Its Tracks; Love Renders Bearable The Passage Of Time, Lust Causes Time To Stand Still, Lust Kills Time, Which Is Not To Say That It Wastes It Or Whiles It Aimlessly Away But Rather That It Annihilates It, Cancels It, Extirpates It From Continuum; Preventing, While Lasts, Any Lapse Into The Tense And Shabby Woes Of Temporal Society, Lust Is The Thousand-pound Odometer Needle On The Dashboard Of The Absolute.

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.

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.

I Show Up In My Writing Room At Approximately 10 A.m. Every Morning Without Fail. Sometimes My Muse Sees Fit To Join Me There And Sometimes She Doesn't, But She Always Knows Where I'll Be. She Doesn't Need To Go Hunting In The Taverns Or On The Beach Or Drag The Boulevard Looking For Me.

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.

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?

If Desire Causes Suffering, It May Be Because We Do Not Desire Wisely, Or That We Are Inexpert At Obtaining What We Desire. Instead Of Hiding Our Heads In A Prayer Cloth And Building Walls Against Temptation, Why Not Get Better At Fulfilling Desire? 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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Solace? That's Why God Made Fermented Beverages And The Blues.

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.

Christians, And Some Jews, Claim We're In The "end Times," But They've Been Saying This Off And On For More Than Two Thousand Years.

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.

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.

Choice. It's The Word That Allows Yes And The Word That Makes No Possible. It's The Word That Puts The Free In Freedom And Takes Obligation Out Of The Mix. It's The Word Upon Which Adventure, Exhilaration, And Authenticity Depend. It's The Word That The Cocoon Whispers To The Caterpillar.

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.

If You Lack The Iron And The Fizz To Take Control Of Your Own Life, Then The Gods Will Repay Your Weakness By Having A Grin Or Two At Your Expense. Should You Fail To Pilot Your Own Ship, Don't Be Surprised At What Inappropriate Port You Find Yourself Docked.

Finding Yourself

Each Time We Exhale, The World Ends; When We Inhale, There Can Be, If We Allow It, Rebirth And Spiritual Renewal. It All Transpires Inside Of Us. In Our Consciousness, In Our Hearts. All The Time.

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?

I'm An Outlaw, Not A Philosopher, But I Know This Much: There's Meaning In Everything, All Things Are Connected, And A Good Champagne Is A Drink.' Bernard Began To Sing Again. Timidly, Leigh-cheri Joined In. Between Verses, They Opened Another Bottle. The Popping Of Its Cork Echoed Throughout The Great Stone Chamber. Of The Three Billion People On Earth, Only Bernard And Leigh-cheri Heard The Popping Of The Cork And Its Echoes. Only Bernard And Leigh-cheri Passed Out Under The Tablecloth.

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.

Almost Any Object, Including This Book You Hold, Can Turn Up As Exhibit A In A Murder Trial.

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.

Things. Cosas. Things Attach Themselves Like Leeches To The Human Soul, Then They Bleed Out The Sweetness And The Music And The Primordial Joy Of Being Unencumbered Upon The Land.

In Fiction, When You Paint Yourself Into A Corner, You Can Write A Pair Of Suction Cups Onto The Bottoms Of Your Shoes And Walk Up The Wall And Out The Skylight And See The Sun Breaking Through The Clouds. In Nonfiction, You Don't Have That Luxury.

You Are An Ignorant Schoolgirl. You Think Civilization Is A Good Thing.

Certain Individual Words Do Possess More Pitch, More Radiance, More Shazam! Than Others, But It's The Way Words Are Juxtaposed With Other Words In A Phrase Or Sentence That Can Create Magic. Perhaps Literally. The Word "grammar," Like Its Sister Word "glamour," Is Actually Derived From An Old Scottish Word That Meant "sorcery." When We Were Made To Diagram Sentences In High School, We Were Unwittingly Being Instructed In Syntax Sorcery, In Wizardry. We Were All Enrolled At Hogwarts. Who Knew?

People Tend The Take Everything Too Seriously. Especially Themselves. Yep. And That's Probably What Makes 'em Scared And Hurt So Much Of The Time. Life Is Too Serious To Take That Seriously.

There Exists A False Aristocracy Based On Family Name, Property, And Inherited Wealth. But There Likewise Exists A True Aristocracy Based On Intelligence, Talent And Virtue.

Never Underestimate How Much Assistance, How Much Satisfaction, How Much Comfort, How Much Soul And Transcendence There Might Be In A Well-made Taco And A Cold Bottle Of Beer.

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.

There Is No Such Thing As A Weird Human Being, It's Just That Some People Require More Understanding Than Others.

A Thing Is Good Because It Is Good, Not Because It Is Natural. A Thing Is Bad Because It Is Bad, Not Because Its Artificial. It Is Not A Damn Iota Better To Be Bitten By A Rattlesnake Than Shot By A Gun.

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.

The Illusion Of The Seventh Veil Was The Illusion That You Could Get Somebody Else To Do It For You. To Think For You. To Hang On Your Cross. The Priest, The Rabbi, The Imam, The Swami, The Philosophical Novelist Were Traffic Cops, At Best. They Might Direct You Through A Busy Intersection, But They Wouldn't Follow You Home And Park Your Car.

Life Is Too Small A Container For Certain Individuals. Some Of Them, Such As Alobar, Huff And Puff And Try To Expand The Container. Others, Such As Kudra, Seek To Pry The Lid Off And Hop Out.

When A Culture Is Being Dumbed Down As Effectively As Ours Is, Its Narrative Arts (literature, Film, Theatre) Seem To Vacillate Between The Brutal And The Bland, Sometimes In The Same Work.

At The Typewriter You Find Out Who You Are.

Dreams Don't Come True. Dreams Are True.

Genius May Stand On The Shoulders Of Giants, But It Stands Alone.

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

Actually, There Are Countless Ways To Live Upon This Tremorous Sphere In Mirth And Good Health, And Probably Only One Way - The Industrial, Urbanized, Herding Way - To Live Here Stupidly, And Man Has Hit Upon That One Way.

A Lot Of Aspiring Writers Are All Ready To Write A Novel, But They Don't Know How To Write Sentences.

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.

I'm Probably More Interested In Sentences Than Anything Else In Life.

A Sense Of Humor...is Superior To Any Religion So Far Devised.

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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.

We've Produced A Generation Of Spiritual Panhandlers, Begging For Coins Of Wisdom, Banging Like Bums On Every Closed Door...if An Old Man Moves Into A Shack Or A Cave And Lets His Beard Grow, People Will Flock From Miles Around Just To Read His "no Trespassing" Sign

Does Koala Bear Poop Smell Like Cough Drops?

Laughter Is Holier Than Piety, Freedom Is Sweeter Than Fame, And In The End It's Love And Love Alone That Really Matters.

The Brown Paper Bag Is The Only Thing Civilized Man Has Produced That Does Not Seem Out Of Place In Nature.

The World Is A Wonderfully Weird Place, Consensual Reality Is Significantly Flawed, No Institution Can Be Trusted, Certainty Is A Mirage, Security A Delusion, And The Tyranny Of The Dull Mind Forever Threatens -- But Our Lives Are Not As Limited As We Think They Are, All Things Are Possible, Laughter Is Holier Than Piety, Freedom Is Sweeter Than Fame, And In The End It's Love And Love Alone That Really Matters.

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

What Difference Does It Make If The Gospel Is Mostly A Lie? It's An Engrossing Story And The Words Of Its Hero Are Excellent Words To Live By, Even Today.

The Trickster's 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.

The Unhappy Person Resents It When You Try To Cheer Him Up, Because That Means He Has To Stop Dwelling On Himself And Start Paying Attention To The Universe. Unhappiness Is The Ultimate Form Of Self-indulgence. When You're Unhappy, You Get To Pay A Lot Of Attention To Yourself. You Get To Take Yourself Oh So Very Seriously.

The Trouble With The Fast Lane Is That All The Movement Is Horizontal. And I Like To Go Vertical Sometimes.

The Beauty Of Simplicity Is The Complexity It Attracts.

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.

It Is Better To Be Small, Colorful, Sexy, Careless, And Peaceful.

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.

This May Be Said For The Last Quarter Of The Twentieth Century: The Truism That If We Want A Better World We Will Have To Be Better People Came To Be Acknowledge, If Not Thoroughly Understood, By A Significantly Large Minority.

Early Religions Were Like Muddy Ponds With Lots Of Foliage. Concealed There, The Fish Of The Soul Could Splash And Feed. Eventually, However, Religions Became Aquariums. Then Hatcheries. From Farm Fingerling To Frozen Fish Stick Is A Short Swim.

Nobody Quite Knew What To Make Of The Moon Any More.

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

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.

The New Wrinkle Is That Escalating Advances In Technology Are Nourishing The Narcissistic Ego The Way Chicken Manure Nourishes A Rose Bush, While Exploding Worldwide Population Is Allowing Its Effects To Multiply Geometrically.

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.

...language Is Not The Frosting, It's The Cake.

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

The Very Act Of Creation Requires Such Focused Concentration That Vast Areas Of Knowledge May Be Completely Overlooked. Well, So What? There Is No Evidence That Generalized Skills Are In Any Way Superior To Specialized Brilliance.

The Fact Is, What I Hated In The Church Was What I Hated In Society. Namely, Authoritarians. Power Freaks. Rigid Dogmatists. Those Greedy, Underloved, Undersexed Twits Who Want To Run Everything. While The Rest Of Us Are Busy Living - Busy Tasting And Testing And Hugging And Kissing And Goofing And Growing - They Are Busy Taking Over.

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.

The First Thunderstorm Of The Season Was In The Dressing Room, Donning Its Black Robes And Its Necklace Of Hailstones, Strapping On Its Electrical Sword.

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.

I Believed In Looking At People As Individuals, Not In Groups. I Hated Groups; Still Do. And I Saw Particularly The University, The University Artists Really Acted As A Group. The Others Didn't So Much, But The University People Took Advantage Of That And Behaved Like A Group, Rather Than As Individuals. They Had A Lot Of Power That Way.

What Are The Odds That Two Separate Writers, Strangers, A Thousand Miles Apart, Would Each Invent Fictions In Which Guys Take Girls To An Esoteric Frog Lecture On Their First Date? If That Isn't Synchronicity, It's Something Equally As Weird.

Once One Pays Some Attention To Something, Then You Begin To See Evidence Of It Everywhere.

Plato Did Claim That The Unexamined Life Was Not Worth Living. Oedipus Rex Was Not So Sure.

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

There's No Point In Saving The World If It Means Losing The Moon.

Eighty Percent Of Love Is Smell.

Love Is The Ultimate Outlaw. It Just Won't Adhere To Any Rules. The Most Any Of Us Can Do Is Sign On As Its Accomplice.

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.

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

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.

To One Degree Or Another, Everybody Is Connected To The Mystery, And Everybody Secretly Yearns To Expand The Connection. That Requires Expanding The Soul. These Things Can Enlarge The Soul: Laughter, Danger, Imagination, Meditation, Wild Nature, Passion, Compassion, Psychedelics, Beauty, Iconoclasm, And Driving Around In The Rain With The Top Down. These Things Can Diminish It: Fear, Bitterness, Blandness, Trendiness, Egotism, Violence, Corruption, Ignorance, Grasping, Shining, And Eating Ketchup On Cottage Cheese.

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.

Most Novelists Write About Twisted Lives.

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.

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.

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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

The Loony Legacy Of Money Was That The Arithmetic By Which Things Were Measured Had Become More Valuable Than The Things Themselves.

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 The Vile Can Be Transformed, And (c) Doing That Makes It That. Loving Makes Love. Loving Makes Itself. We Waste Time Looking For The Perfect Lover Instead Of Creating The Perfect Love. Wouldn't That Be The Way To Make Love 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.

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

Magic Things Are Fond Of Deceptions.

The Pervasive Brutality In Current Fiction - The Death, Disease, Dysfunction, Depression, Dismemberment, Drug Addiction, Dementia, And Dreary Little Dramas Of Domestic Discord - Is An Obvious Example Of How Language In Exploitative, Cynical Or Simply Neurotic Hands Can Add To The Weariness, The Darkness In The World.

Outlaws, Like Lovers, Poets, And Tubercular Composers Who Cough Blood Onto Piano Keys, Do Their Finest Work In The Slippery Rays Of The Moon.

Very Few People Can Write In A Crowd. This Is A Very Solitary Occupation. I Have Known People More Talented Than Me Who Never Made It. And The Primary Reason Was Always That They Couldn't Stand To Be Alone For Several Hours A Day. Any Writer Worth Anything Has Mastered The Art. The Art Of Solitude.

When We Accept Small Wonders, We Qualify Ourselves To Imagine Great Wonders.

Except In The Areas Of Civil Rights And Medical Marijuana, The Legacy Of The Sixties Counterculture Has Been Largely Superficial. Still, Though The Light Has Dimmed And Gone Underground, Something In Me Would Like To Think The Sixties Phenomenon Was A Dress Rehearsal For A Grander, Wider Leap In Consciousness Yet To Come.

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

Well, There's One Thing To Be Said For Money. It Can Make You Rich.

It's Hard To Say Who's A Greater Threat To The World, An Ambitious Ceo With A Big Ad Budget Or A Crafty Cleric With An Obsolete Bible Verse.

I Had Literary Interests My Whole Life. I Decided At The Age Of Five I Was Going To Be A Writer. So I Had Done A Great Deal Of Reading. I Suppose I Was More At Home In Greenwich Village Than, Say, Any Of Classmates From Warsaw High School. But In Any Case, It Was An Overwhelming Experience For Me. It Took Me Some Time To Begin To Assimilate It.

What Is Politics, After All, But The Compulsion To Preside Over Property And Make Others People's Decisions For Them? Liberty, The Very Opposite Of Ownership And Control, Cannot, Then, Result From Political Action, Either At The Polls Or At The Barricades, But Rather Evolves Out Of Attitude. If It Results From Anything, It Must Be Levity.

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.

The Full Moon - The Mandala Of The Sky.

Ellen Cherry Was From The South And Had Good Manners. She Didn´t Have Any Panties On, But She Had Good Manners.

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

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.

The Winter Passed As Slowly And Peacefully As A Boa Constrictor Digesting A Valium Addict.

The Divine Was Beyond Description, Beyond Knowing, Beyond Comprehension. To Say That The Divine Was Creation Divided By Destruction Was As Close As One Could Come To Definition. But The Puny Of Soul, The Dull Of Wit, Weren't Content With That. They Wanted To Hang A Face On The Divine. They Went So Far As To Attribute Petty Human Emotions - Anger, Jealousy, Etc - To It, Not Stopping To Realize That If God Were A Being, Even A Supreme Being, Our Prayers Would Have Bored Him To Death Long Ago.

There's Probably No Subject With Quite So Many Conflictin' Opinions About It As There Are About Food, And 'tis Better To Swap Bubble Gum With A Rabid Bulldog Than Challenge A Single One O' The Varyin' Beliefs Your Average Human Holds About Nutrition.

There Are Only Two Mantras, Yum And Yuck, Mine Is Yum.

Still Life With Woodpecker

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

They Fell Asleep Smiling. It Is To Erase The Fixed Smiles Of Sleeping Couples That Satan Trained Roosters To Crow At Five In The Morning.

Hawaii Made The Mouth Of Her Soul Water.

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

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.

Just Because Something Didn't Happen Doesn't Mean It Isn't True.

If Little Else, The Brain Is An Educational Toy.

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.

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

Life Is Hard If You Think It's Hard.

Words On A Page Can Hypnotize You If The Rhythm Is Right

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.

Outlaws Are Can Openers In The Supermarket Of Life.

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I Think Too Much Is Known About Me Already. I Think Biographical Information Can Get In The Way Of The Reading Experience. The Interchange Between The Reader And The Work. For Example, I Know Far Too Much About Norman Mailer And Kurt Vonnegut. Because I Know As Much As I Do About Their Personal Lives, I Can't Read Their Work Without This Interjecting Itself. So If I Had It To Do Over, I'd Probably Go The Way Of J.d. Salinger Or Thomas Pynchon. And Just Stay Out Of It Altogether And Let All The Focus Be On The Work Itself And Not On Me.

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.

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.

We Say We Are Earthlings, Not Waterlings. Our Blood Is Closer To Seawater Than Our Bones To Soil, But Thats No Matter. The Sea Is The Cradle We All Rocked Out Of, But Its To Dust That We Go. From The Time That Water Invented Us, We Began To Seek Out Dirt. The Further We Separate Ourselves From The Dirt, The Further We Separate Ourselves From Ourselves. Alienation Is A Disease Of The Unsoiled.

Alone, The World Offers Itself Freely To Us. To Be Unmasked, It Has No Choice.

Still Life With Woodpecker

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

Rap Music... Sounds Like Somebody Feeding A Rhyming Dictionary To A Popcorn Popper.

Any Half-awake Materialist Well Knows - That Which You Hold Holds You.

Still Life With Woodpecker

Data In Our Psychic Program Is Often Nonlinear, Nonhierarchical, Archaic, Alive, And Teeming With Paradox. Simply Booting Up Is A Challenge, If Not For No Other Reason Than That Most Of Us Find Acknowledging The Unknowable And Monitoring Its Intrusions Upon The Familiar And Mundane More Than A Little Embarrassing.

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'.

Louisiana In September Was Like An Obscene Phone Call From Nature. The Air - Moist, Sultry, Secretive, And Far From Fresh - Felt As If It Were Being Exhaled Into One's Face. Sometimes It Even Sounded Like Heavy Breathing.

The Oyster Was An Animal Worthy Of New Orleans, As Mysterious And Private And Beautiful As The City Itself. If One Could Accept That Oysters Build Their Houses Out Of Their Lives, One Could Imagine The Same Of New Orleans, Whose Houses Were Similarly And Resolutely Shuttered Against An Outside World That Could Never Be Trusted To Show Proper Sensitivity Toward The Oozing Delicacies Within.

She Continued Weeping Until The Heat Of Her Tear Water, The Sheer Velocity Of Its Flow, Finally Obscured The Already Vague Circumstances Of Its Origins.

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.

…not A Fighter… An Adventurer. He Doesn’t Attack, He Engages; He Doesn’t Defend, He Expands; He Doesn’t Destroy, He Transforms; He Doesn’t Reject, He Explores; ….

Unhappiness Is The Ultimate Form Of Self-indulgence.

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

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

In This World That God (or Mother Nature) Created, It Is Always Hazard And Novelty-hazard And Novelty-which Assert Themselves, Thereby Rendering Notions Of Fixity Absurd. Incongruously Enough, However, When We Allow Ourselves To Fully Accept Uncertainty, To Embrace And Cultivate It Even, Then We Actually Can Begin To Feel Within Ourselves The Presence Of An Absolute. The Person Who Cannot Welcome Ambiguity Cannot Welcome God.

Be Your Own Flying Saucer! Rescue Yourself!

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

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

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 Einstein's Brain. I Want A City's 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 Like Travelers, But I Don't Like Tourists. The Difference Is That Travelers Don't Shop And They Don't Play Golf.

So You Think That You're A Failure, Do You? Well, You Probably Are. What's Wrong With That? In The First Place, If You've Any Sense At All You Must Have Learned By Now That We Pay Just As Dearly For Our Triumphs As We Do For Our Defeats. Go Ahead And Fail. But Fail With Wit, Fail With Grace, Fail With Style. A Mediocre Failure Is As Insufferable As A Mediocre Success. Embrace Failure! Seek It Out. Learn To Love It. That May Be The Only Way Any Of Us Will Ever Be Free.

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

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)

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.

Self-esteem Is For Sissies. Accept That You're A Pimple And Try To Keep A Lively Sense Of Humor About It. That Way Lies Grace - And Maybe Even Glory.

His Voice Wore No Pants.

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.

As Long As A Population Can Be Induced To Believe In A Supernatural Hereafter, It Can Be Oppressed And Controlled. People Will Put Up With All Sorts Of Tyranny, Poverty, And Painful Treatment If They're Convinced That They'll Eventually Escape To Some Resort In The Sky Where Lifeguards Are Superfluous And The Pool Never Closes. Moreover, The Faithful Are Usually Willing To Risk Their Skins In Whatever Military Adventure Their Government May Currently Be Promoting.

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.

The Moon Invented Natural Rhythm. Civilization Uninvented It.

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

What I’ve Learned Along The Way Is That Existence Is Cosmic Theatre, But Paradoxically, We Should Play Our Roles To The Absolute Best Of Our Ability While Having The Wisdom Not To Take Them Too Seriously.

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.

Meditation... Dissolves The Mind. It Erases Itself. Throws The Ego Out On Its Big Brittle Ass.

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.

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.

Laws, It Is Said, Are For The Protection Of The People. It's Unfortunate That There Are No Statistics On The Number Of Lives That Are Clobbered Yearly As A Result Of Laws: Outmoded Laws; Laws That Found Their Way Onto The Books As A Result Of Ignorance, Hysteria Or Political Haymaking; Antilife Laws; Biased Laws; Laws That Pretend That Reality Is Fixed And Nature Is Definable; Laws That Deny People The Right To Refuse Protection. A Survey Such As That Could Keep A Dozen Dull Sociologists Out Of Mischief For Months.

The Brutal Truth Is, We're Scarcely 'educating' Children At All. Even If You Overlook The Guilt, Fear, Bigotry, And Dangerous Anti-intellectual Flapdoodle Being Funneled Into Young Brains By Schools On The Religious Right, What We're Doing Is Training Kids To Be Cogs In The Wheels Of Commerce.

A Mediocre Failure Is As Insufferable As A Mediocre Success. Embrace Failure! Seek It Out. Learn To Love It. That May Be The Only Way Any Of Us Will Ever Be Free.

Still Life With Woodpecker

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.

I Work With Pen And Paper. That's My Favorite Way To Write. I Love The Way The Ink Sinks Into The Wood, Soaks Into The Wood Pulp. There's Something About That Process That's So Organic.

There's Always The Same Amount Of Good Luck And Bad Luck In The World. If One Person Doesn't Get The Bad Luck, Somebody Else Will Have To Get It In Their Place. There's Always The Same Amount Of Good And Evil, Too. We Can't Eradicate Evil, We Can Only Evict It, Force It To Move Across Town. And When Evil Moves, Some Good Always Goes With It. But We Can Never Alter The Ratio Of Good To Evil. All We Can Do Is Keep Things Stirred Up So Neither Good Nor Evil Solidifies. That's When Things Get Scary. Life Is Like A Stew, You Have To Stir It Frequently, Or All The Scum Rises To The Top.

As A Child, I Was An Imaginary Playmate.

The Scientist Keeps The Romantic Honest, And The Romantic Keeps The Scientist Human.

The Difference Between Love And Logic Is That In The Eyes Of A Lover, A Toad Can Be A Prince, Whereas In The Analysis Of A Logistician, The Lover Would Have To Prove That The Toad Was A Prince, An Enterprise Destined To Dull The Shine Of Many A Passion.

Whenever I Finish A Book, I Go Off And Have Some Kind Of Adventure. Having Had An Adventure In My Writing Chair Or On My Writing Sofa, An Internal Adventure, Then I Need To Balance That Off With An External Adventure, So I'll Go Tramping Through Africa Or Whitewater Rafting Or Float To Hawaii In A Martini Shaker Or Something.

America Is A Nation Of 270 Million People: 100 Million Of Them Are Gangsters, Another 100 Million Are Hustlers, 50 Million Are Complete Lunatics, And Every Single One Of Us Is Secretly In Show Business. Isn't That Fabulous?

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), A Margin Whose Width And Length May Be Determined By Unknown Factors But Whose Navigation Is Determined By The Measure Of The Adventurer's Nerve And Wits. It Is Exhilarating To Live By One's Nerves Or Toward The Summit Of One's Wits.

Oh God, Are There So Many Of Them In Our Land! Students Who Can’t Be Happy Until They’ve Graduated, Servicemen Who Can’t Be Happy Until They Are Discharged, Single Folks Who Can’t Be Happy Until They’ve Found A Mate, Workers Who Can’t Be Happy Until They’ve Retired, Adolescents Who Aren’t Happy Until They’re Grown, Ill People Who Aren’t Happy Until They’re Well, Failures Who Aren’t Happy Until They Succeed, Restless Who Can’t Wait Until They Get Out Of Town, And In Most Cases, Vice Versa, People Waiting, Waiting For The World To Begin.

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.

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.

If You Were Jesus With Missing Years To Kill Where Would You Go?

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James Whitcomb Riley

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