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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.

-Tom Robbins

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In The End, Perhaps

Tom Robbins

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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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

I Would Only Read The Novels That People Classify As 'beach Books' If I Were Being Held Prisoner And The Only Alternative Was The 'book Of Mormon.'

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

All A Person Can Do In This Life Is Gather About Him His Integrity, His Imagination, And His Individuality – And With These Ever With Him, Out Front And In Sharp Focus, Leap Into The Dance Of Experience.

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

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.

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.

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

I Have Never Ever Googled Myself, In Fact I Think The Christian Right Prohibits Such Things.

The Beauty Of Simplicity Is The Complexity It Attracts.

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

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

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

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?

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Poetry, The Best Of It, Is Lunar And Is Concerned With The Essential Insanities. Journalism Is Solar (there Are Numerous Newspapers Named The Sun, None Called The Moon) And Is Devoted To The Inessential.

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

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

What Bothers Me Today Is The Lack Of, Well, I Guess You'd Call It Authentic Experience. So Much Is A Sham. So Much Is Artificial, Synthetic, Watered-down, And Standardized...we're Standardizing People, Their Goals, Their Ideas. The Sham Is Everywhere.

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.

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.

Cries For Help Are Frequently Inaudible.

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

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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.

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.

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.

Something Has Got To Hold It Together. I'm Saying My Prayers To Elmer, The Greek God Of Glue.

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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.

A Spirit Cannot Soar With Only One Wing.

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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.

You May Tell The Greatest Lies And Wear A Brilliant Disguise, But You Can't Escape The Eyes Of The One Who Sees Right Through You.

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

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

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.

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.

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?

Teachers Who Offer You The Ultimate Answers Do Not Possess The Ultimate Answers, For If They Did, They Would Know That The Ultimate Answers Cannot Be Given, They Can Only Be Received.

Life Is Hard If You Think It's Hard.

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

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.

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

A Mockingbird... Was Heard To Blend The Songs Of 32 Different Kinds Of Birds Into A 10 Minute Performance, A Virtuoso Display That Served No Practical Purpose, Falling, Therefore, Into The Realm Of Pure Art.

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.

I Started Writing When I Was 5 Years Old. I Would Dictate Stories To My Mother, And She Would Copy Them In A Scrapbook. If She Changed Anything To Make It, In Her Opinion, Better, I Would Throw A Tantrum.

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.

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

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.

When Life Demands More Of People Than They Demand Of Life - As Is Ordinarily The Case - What Results Is A Resentment Of Life Almost As Deep-seated As The Fear Of Death

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 Odor Of Frying Bacon, Sausage Links, And Ham Tiptoed On Little Pig Feet All The Way To The North End Of The Second Floor. Inevitably, The Odor Made Her Simultaneously Ravenous And Nauseated. She Hated The Sensation. It Reminded Her Of Pregnancy. Every Sunday Morning, Leigh-cheri Awoke To A Pan Of Fried Fear.

Why Procrastinate When You Can Precognitate?

Procrastinating

My Life Is Not Merely A Public Phenomenon, It Is A Solitary Adventure As Well.

Amnesia Is Not Knowing Who One Is And Wanting Desperately To Find Out. Euphoria Is Not Knowing Who One Is And Not Caring. Ecstasy Is Knowing Exactly Who One Is - And Still Not Caring.

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

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

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.

From The Outside, My Life May Look Chaotic, But Inside I Feel Like Some Kind Of Monk Licking An Ice Cream Cone While Straddling A Runaway Horse.

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.

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.

Minds Were Made For Blowing.

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.

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.

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.

...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.

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

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

Be Your Own Flying Saucer! Rescue Yourself!

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

All Dreams Continue In The Beyond.

On Their Sofas Of Spice And Feathers, The Concubines Also Slept Fretfully. In Those Days The Earth Was Still Flat, And People Dreamed Often Of Falling Over Edges.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

It's Entirely Possible To Function As A Free-thinking Individual Without Succumbing To Narcissism. This Can Be Tricky At Times, I Suppose, But Then So Can The Tango - Particularly If You're Dancing Alone.

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.

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.

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.

That's The Way The Mind Works: The Brain Is Genetically Disposed Towards Organization, Yet If Not Controlled, Will Link Even The Most Imagerial Fragment To Another On The Flimsiest Pretense And In The Most Freewheeling Manner, As If It Takes A Kind Of Organic Pleasure In Creative Association, Without Regards To Logic Or Chronological Sequence.

Never Be Afraid To Love, Not Even When There's A Chance You're Not Being Loved In Return.

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.

The Function Of The Artist Is To Provide What Life Does Not.

I Cannot Believe That The Most Delicious Things Were Placed Here Merely To Test Us, To Temp Us, To Make It The More Difficult For Us To Capture The Grand Prize: The Safety Of The Void. To Fashion Of Life Such A Petty Game Is Unworthy Of Both Men And Gods.

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.

Meet Me In Cognito, Baby. In Cognito, We'll Have Nothing To Hide.

Redheads Are Said To Be Children Of The Moon, Thwarted By The Sun And Addicted To Sex And Sugar.

People Who Sacrifice Beauty For Efficiency Get What They Deserve. (bernard Mickey Wrangle, P 99)

Still Life With Woodpecker

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.

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.

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

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.

Eighty Percent Of Love Is Smell.

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.

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

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.

It Is As If The Soul Of The Continent Is Weeping. Why Does It Weep? It Weeps For The Bones Of The Buffalo. It Weeps For Magic That Has Been Forgotten. It Weeps For The Decline Of Poets.it Weepsfor The Black People Who Think Like White People.it Weepsfor The Indians Who Think Like Settlers.it Weepsfor The Children Who Think Like Adults.it Weepsfor The Free Who Think Like Prisoners.most Of All, It Weepsfor The Cowgirls Who Think Like Cowboys.

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

I Finish The Book So I Can See How It's Going To End. I Write That First Sentence, And If It's The Right First Sentence, It Leads To The Right Second Sentence And Three Years Later You Have A 500-page Manuscript, But It Really Is Like Going On A Trip, Going On A Journey. It's A Voyage.

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

Still Life With Woodpecker

Sharks Are The Criminals Of The Sea. Dolphins Are The Outlaws.

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

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.

If Love Eats The Donut, Does Time Eat The Hole?

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.

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

Survival Is Not Important. What Matters Is How You Survive.

Don't Be Outraged, Be Outrageous.

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.

Brilliantly, Ecstatically, Irrepressibly. This Is The Way To Burn

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.

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.

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.

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.

Love Easily Confuses Us Because It Is Always In Flux Between Illusion And Substance, Between Memory And Wish, Between Contentment And Need.

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.

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.

Some Marriages Are Made In Heaven, Mine Was Made In Hong Kong, By The Same People Who Make Those Little Rubber Pork Chops They Sell In The Pet Department At Kmart.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

I Am Cheerful. I Don't Know If I'm Happy. There Is A Difference, You Know.

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.

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

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.

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?'

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.

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.

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.

The Trouble With You Is That The Only Way You Can Communicate Is Through Art. You’ve Never Learned To Communicate Your Feelings To A Man. You Don’t Even Want To Communicate In A Relationship. You Think That If You Open Up To Love, You’ll Lose Your Independence Or Your Self-expression Or Creativity Or Whatever You Call All That Passionate, Wonderful Stuff That Makes You Feel Alive Inside.

Those Same Forces That Drive A Genius To Create The Things Or Ideas That Entertain Or Enlighten Us Often Gobble So Much Of His Personality That He Has None Left For The Social Graces.

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.

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.

…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; ….

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

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

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.

I Can't Remember Exactly The First Thing I Wrote, But One Of The Stories, Was About A Pilot Whose Plane Crashed On A Desert Island, And The Only Other Life On The Island Was A Brown Cow With Yellow Spots. The Cow Had... To Survive, Had Taught Itself To Eat And Get Nutriments From Sand. I Guess, I've Always Been Interested In Adaptability And Taking Whatever Life Hands You And Running With It.

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.

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

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

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.

Christianity Is Merely A System For Turning Priestesses Into Handmaidens, Queens Into Concubines, And Goddesses Into Muses.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

This Is The Room Of The Wolfmother Wallpaper.

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

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.

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)

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

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

We All Dream Profusely Every Night, Yet By Morning We've Forgotten Ninety Percent Of What Went On. That's Why Poets Are Such Important Members Of Society. Poets Remember Our Dreams For Us.

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.

At The Typewriter You Find Out Who You Are.

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

As A Child, I Was An Imaginary Playmate.

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

Slavic Peoples Get Their Physical Characteristics From Potatoes, Their Smoldering Inquietude From Radishes, Their Seriousness From Beets.

Characteristics

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

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

Still Life With Woodpecker

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

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.

Bland Writing - Timid, Antiseptic, Vanilla Writing - Is Nearly As Unhealthy As The Brutal And Dark. Instead Of Sipping, Say, Elixir, Nectar, Tequila, Or Champagne, The Reader Is Invited To Slurp Lumpy Milk Or Choke On The Author's Dust Bunnies.

Human Folly Does Not Impede The Turning Of The Stars.

People Write Memoirs Because They Lack The Imagination To Make Things Up.

Outlaws Are Can Openers In The Supermarket Of Life.

Still Life With Woodpecker

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 Only Question Is How To Make Love Stay.

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