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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.

-Tom Robbins

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I Went To A

Tom Robbins

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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.

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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.

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.

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

The Trick Is This: Keep Your Eye On The Ball. Even When You Can't See The Ball.

Consider The Silent Repose Of The Sausage As Compared To The Aggressiveness Of Bacon.

Those Who Possess Wisdom Cannot Just Ladle It Out To Every Wantwit And Jackanapes Who Comes Along And Asks For It. A Person Must Be Prepared To Receive Wisdom, Or Else It Will Do Him More Harm Than Good. Moreover, A Lout Thrashing About In The Clear Waters Of Wisdom Will Dirty Those Waters For Everyone Else.

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.

Though February Lay About Her Shoulders Like A Cloak Of Lead.

Religion Is Nothing But Institutionalized Mysticism. The Catch Is, Mysticism Does Not Lend Itself To Institutionalization. The Moment We Attempt To Organize Mysticism, We Destroy Its Essence. Religion, Then, Is Mysticism In Which The Mystical Has Been Killed. Or, At Least Diminished.

His Voice Wore No Pants.

Why Procrastinate When You Can Precognitate?

Procrastinating

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

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

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.

But Do We Know How To Make Love Stay?' I Can't Even Think About It. The Best I Can Do Is Play It Day By Day.

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 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.

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

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

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.

The Full Moon - The Mandala Of The Sky.

Logic Only Gives Man What He Needs... Magic Gives Him What He Wants.

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

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.

O Tequila, Savage Water Of Sorcery, What Confusion And Mischief Your Sly, Rebellious Drops Do Generate

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

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

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.

Eighty Percent Of Love Is Smell.

He Who Jokes In The Executioners Face Can Be Destroyed, But Never Defeated.

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

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.

...to Emphasize The Afterlife Is To Deny Life. To Concentrate On Heaven Is To Create Hell. In Their Desperate Longing To Transcend The Disorderliness, Friction, And Unpredictability That Pesters Life; In Their Desire For A Fresh Start In A Tidy Habitat, Germ-free And Secured By Angels, Religious Multitudes Are Gambling The Only Life They May Ever Have On A Dark Horse In A Race That Has No Finish Line.

But Say You've Inflated Your Soul To The Size Of A Beach Ball And It's Soaking Into The Mystery Like Wine Into A Mattress. What Have You Accomplished? Well, Long Term, You May Have Prepared Yourself For A Successful Metamorphosis, An Almost Inconceivable Transformation To Be Precipitated By Your Death Or By Some Great Worldwide Eschatological Whoopjamboreehoo. You May Have. No One Can Say For Sure.

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

Life's An Offensive Proposition From Beginning To End. Maybe Those Who Can't Tolerate Offense Ought To Just Go Ahead And End It All, And Maybe Those Who Demand Financial Compensation For Offense Ought To Have It Ended For Them.

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.

Admittedly, Having A Bit Of Disposable Cash In The Bank Can Give You A Sense Of Buddhistic Calm, And Despite The Fallacy Involved, That's Probably Preferable To The Bonafide Adventure Of Robbing A Bank. A Better Alternative, However, Is To Learn To Be At Peace Even When Common Sense (a Highly Overrated Virtue) Would Lead You To Believe That Someone In Your Situation Ought To Feel Threatened And Insecure.

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.

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.

And Who Ever Said The World Was Fair, Little Lady? Maybe Death Is Fair, But Certainly Not Life. We Must Accept The Unfairness As Proof Of The Sublime Flux Of Existence, The Capricious Music Of The Universe- And Go On About Our Tasks

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.

Three Of The Four Elements Are Shared By All Creatures, But Fire Was A Gift To Humans Alone. Smoking Cigarettes Is As Intimate As We Can Become With Fire Without Immediate Excruciation. Every Smoker Is An Embodiment Of Prometheus, Stealing Fire From The Gods And Bringing It On Back Home. We Smoke To Capture The Power Of The Sun, To Pacify Hell, To Identify With The Primordial Spark, To Feed On The Marrow Of The Volcano. It’s Not The Tobacco We’re After But The Fire. When We Smoke, We Are Performing A Version Of The Fire Dance, A Ritual As Ancient As Lightning.

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

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

I Could Say I Believe In Every Drop Of Rain That . . . Well, I Believe Life Is A Zen Koan, That Is, An Unsolvable Riddle. But The Contemplation Of That Riddle--even Though It Cannot Be Solved--is, In Itself, Transformative. And If The Contemplation Is Of High Enough Quality, You Can Merge With The Divine.

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.

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

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.

What Is Politics, After All, But The Compulsion To Preside Over Property And Make Other Peoples' Decisions For Them?

For Most People, Self-awareness And Self-pity Blossom Simultaneously In Early Adolescence. It's 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 Be, 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, Doesn't Give A Rat's Ass.

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.

When I Sit Down To Write, I Just Let The Goose Out Of The Bottle.

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

One Has Not Only An Ability To Perceive The World But An Ability To Alter One's Perception Of It; More Simply, One Can Change Things By The Manner In Which One Looks At Them.

Success Can Eliminate As Many Options As Failure.

Success Failure

Unhappiness Is The Ultimate Form Of Self-indulgence.

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

Politics Is For People Who Have A Passion For Changing Life But Lack A Passion For Living It.

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.

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.

I'll Bet I'm As Old As You Are." "i'm Older Than Sanskrit." "well, I Was Waitress At The Last Supper." "i'm So Old I Remember When Mcdonald's Had Only Sold A Hundred Burgers." "you Win.

I Have Always Been A Romantic, One Of Those People Who Believes That A Woman In Pink Circus Tights Contains All The Secrets Of The Universe.

Most Novelists Write About Twisted Lives.

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

People Are Never Perfect, But Love Can Be.

Still Life With Woodpecker

There Are Essential And Inessential Insanities. The Later Are Solar In Character, The Former Are Linked To The Moon.

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.

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?

My Faith Is Whatever Makes Me Feel Good About Being Alive. If Your Religion Doesn't Make You Feel Good To Be Alive, What The Hell Is The Point Of It?

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

You Should Never Hesitate To Trade Your Cow For A Handful Of Magic Beans.

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.

If You Need To Visualize The Soul, Think Of It As A Cross Between A Wolf Howl, A Photon And A Dribble Of Dark Molasses. But What It Really Is, As Near As I Can Tell, Is A Packet Of Information. It's A Program, A Piece Of Hyperspatial Software Designed Explicitly To Interface With The Mystery. Not A Mystery, Mind You - The Mystery. The One That Can Never Be Solved.

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.

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

Curiosity, Especially Intellectual Inquisitiveness, Is What Separates The Truly Alive From Those Who Are Merely Going Through The Motions.

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

The Author Isn't Altogether Certain That There Is Any Such Thing As Exaggeration. Our Brains Permit Us To Use Such A Wee Fraction Of Their Resources That, In A Sense, Everything We Experience Is A Reduction. We Employ Drugs, Yoga Techniques And Poetics - And A Thousand More Clumsy Methods - In An Effort Just To Bring Things Back Up To Normal.

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

The Earth Is God's Pinball Machine And Each Quake, Tidal Wave, Flash Flood And Volcanic Eruption Is The Result Of A Tilt That Occurs When God, Cheating, Tries To Win Free Games.

You Don't Have To Be A Genius To Recognize One. If You Did, Einstein Would Never Have Gotten Invited To The White House.

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.

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.

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.

Red Hair Is Caused By Sugar And Lust.

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.

Breathe Properly. Stay Curious. And Eat Your Beets.

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.

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 Most Important Thing In Life Is Style. That Is, The Style Of Ones Existence-the Characteristic Mode Of Ones Actions-is Basically, Ultimately What Matters. For If Man Defines Himself By Doing, Then Style Is Doubly Definitive, Because Style Describes The Doing.

The Party In Alobar’s Head, Which Agitation And Anxiety Were Throwing, Now Was Crashed By A Notion: Existence Can Be Rearranged.

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

The Truth, From My Perspective, Is That The World, Indeed, Is Ending - And Is Also Being Reborn. It's Been Doing That All Day, Every Day, Forever.

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.

When We Accept Bad Art Because It's Good Politics, We're Killing The Swan To Feed The Chickens.

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.

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.

Leave It To A Naive World-saver Like You To View Our Love As A Sacred Cause When In Actual Fact All It Was Was Some Barking At The Moon.

Wit And Playfulness Represent A Desperately Serious Transcendence Of Evil. Humor Is Both A Form Of Wisdom And A Means Of Survival.

One Tended To Lose One’s Bearings In The Presence Of Willful And Persistent Acts Of Craziness, And The More Gentle The Act, The Crazier It Seemed, As If Rage And Violence, Being Closer To The Norm, Were Easier To Accommodate.

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.

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

Still Life With Woodpecker

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.

I Like Travelers, But I Don't Like Tourists. The Difference Is That Travelers Don't Shop And They Don't Play Golf.

Humanity Has Advanced, When It Has Advanced, Not Because It Has Been Sober, Responsible, And Cautious, But Because It Has Been Playful, Rebellious, And Immature.

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.

Human Beings Were Not Well Served By Permanence Or Stasis. Obviously, If Individuals Were Progressing, They Were Undergoing A Series Of Presumably Desirable Alterations, But In A Universe Where Flux Is Fundamental, It Can Be Argued That Even Change For The Worse Is Preferable To No Change At All. Isn't Fixity The Hallmark Of The Living Dead?.

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

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

This Is The Room Of The Wolfmother Wallpaper.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Love Is The Ultimate Outlaw.

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.

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

In The Haunted House Of Life, Art Is The Only Stair That Doesn't Creak.

Reality Whistles A Different Tune Underwater.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Madame Lily Devalier Always Asked "where Are You?" In A Way That Insinuated That There Were Only Two Places On Earth One Could Be: New Orleans And Somewhere Ridiculous.

Religions Lead Us To Believe That The Soul Is The Ultimate Family Jewel And That In Return For Our Mindless Obedience, They Can Secure It For Us In Their Vaults, Or At Least Insure It Against Fire And Theft. They Are Mistaken.

Usually, Autobiography Is Such An Indulgence Of The Ego.

Reality Is Contradictory. And It's Paradoxical. If There's Any One Word -- If You Had To Pick One Word To Describe The Nature Of The Universe -- I Think That Word Would Be Paradox. That's True At The Subatomic Level, Right Through Sociological, Psychological, Philosophical Levels On Up To Cosmic Levels.

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.

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.

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

Don't Confuse Symmetry With Balance.

Be Your Own Flying Saucer! Rescue Yourself!

Those People Who Recognise That Imagination Is Reality's Master, We Call Sages, And Those Who Act Upon It, We Call Artists.

Human Folly Does Not Impede The Turning Of The Stars.

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

Falling In Love

If Little Else, The Brain Is An Educational Toy.

The Rich Are The Most Discriminated-against Minority In The World. Openly Or Covertly, Everybody Hates The Rich Because, Openly Or Covertly, Everybody Envies The Rich. Me, I Love The Rich. Somebody Has To Love Them. Sure, A Lot O’ Rich People Are Assholes, But Believe Me, A Lot O’ Poor People Are Assholes, Too, And An Asshole With Money Can At Least Pay For His Own Drinks.

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

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

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

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.

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.

This Is The Room Where Jezebel Frescoed Her Eyelids With History's Tragic Glitter

What An Electric Heater Perched Upon The Rim Of The Bathtub Of The World That Dead Jesus Was.

The Only Bubble In The Flat Champagne Of February Is Valentine’s Day. It Was No Accident That Our Ancestors Pinned Valentine’s Day On February’s Shirt: He Or She Lucky Enough To Have A Lover In Frigid, Antsy February Has Cause For Celebration, Indeed.

I'll Follow Him To The Ends Of The Earth,' She Sobbed. Yes, Darling. But The Earth Doesn't Have Any Ends. Columbus Fixed That.

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

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

There Are Times When We Can Feel Destiny Close Around Us Like A Fist Around A Doorknob. Sure, We Can Resist. But A Knob That Won't Turn, A Door That Sticks And Never Budges, Is A Nuisance To The Gods. The Gods May Kick In The Jamb. Worse, They May Walk Away In Disgust, Leaving Us To Hang Dumbly From Our Tight Hinges, Deprived Of Any Other Chance In Life To Swing Open Into Unnecessary Risk And Thus Into Enchantment.

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.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

In Order To Be Respected, Authority Has Got To Be Respectable.

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

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

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

I Journey To The East, Where I Have Been Told, There Are Men Who Have Taught Death Some Manners.

Reality Is Contradictory. And It's Paradoxical.

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

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.

Life Is Like A Stew, You Have To Stir It Frequently, Or All The Scum Rises To The Top.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

I Like To Think Of Myself As A Fiction Writer Who Liked Art Enough To Write About It For A While, And Then Went On To His Fiction.

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

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

The Highest Function Of Love Is That It Makes The Loved One A Unique And Irreplacable Being.

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.

Maybe Most People Were Fundamentally Contradictory. The Real People At Any Rate.

Anyone Who Maintains Absolute Standards Of Good And Evil Is Dangerous. As Dangerous As A Maniac With A Loaded Revolver.

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

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

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.

In Referring To Her Earlier Statement That He Had Was Not Her Type Because He Was "a Dollar Short When It Came To Maturity And A Day Late When It Came To Peace." I May Have Been Wrong About That," She Conceded. "you Are A Complicated Man, But Happily Complicated. You Have Found A Way To Be At Home With The World's Confusion, A Way To Embrace The Chaos Rather Than Struggle To Reduce It Or Become Its Victim. It's All Part Of The Game To You, And You Are Delighted To Play. In That Regard, You May Have Reached A More Elevated Plateau Of Harmony Than...ummph.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Much More Than An Entertaining Set Of Exaggerated Facts, Fiction Is A Metaphoric Method Of Describing, Dramatizing And Condensing Historical Events, Personal Actions, Psychological States And The Symbolic Knowledge Encoded Within The Collective Unconscious; Things, Events And Conditions That Are Otherwise Too Diffuse And/or Complex To Be Completely Digested Or Appreciated By The Prevailing Culture.

Collective Unconscious

If You Take Any Activity, Any Art, Any Discipline, Any Skill-take It And Push It As Far As It Will Go, Push It Beyond Where It Has Ever Been Before, Push It To The Wildest Edges Of Edges, Then You Force It Into The Realm Of Magic.

You Know What I Mean? Real And Unreal, Beautiful And Strange, Like A Dream. It Got Me High As A Kite, But It Didn’t Last Long Enough. It Ended Too Soon And Left Nothing Behind.” That’s How It Is With Dreams,” Said Priscilla. “they’re The Perfect Crime.

Minds Were Made For Blowing.

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

Unfortunately, Little Darlings, There Is No Such Thing As A Simple Love Story.the Most Transitory Puppy Crush Is Complex To The Extent Of Lying Beyond The Far Reaches Of The Brain's Understanding.

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.

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.

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.

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

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