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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.

-Tom Robbins

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Laws, It Is Said,

Tom Robbins

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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.

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

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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.

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Peeple Of Zee Wurl, Relax

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

People Of Ze Wurl, Relax!

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

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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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

The Beet Is The Most Intense Of Vegetables. The Radish, Admittedly, Is More Feverish, But The Fire Of The Radish Is A Cold Fire, The Fire Of Discontent, Not Of Passion. Tomatoes Are Lusty Enough, Yet There Runs Through Tomatoes An Undercurrent Of Frivolity. Beets Are Deadly Serious.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Red Hair Is Caused By Sugar And Lust.

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.

Danger Is To Adventure What Garlic Is To Spaghetti Sauce. Without It, You Just End Up With Stewed Tomatoes.

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.

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

I 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.

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

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

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.

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

The 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.

It Is What It Is. You Are What You It. There Are No Mistakes.

It Is What It Is

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

Much Scientific Truth Proved To Be As Hypothetical As Poetic Allegory. The Relationshiip Of Those Rod-connected Blue And Red Balls To An Actual Atomic Structure Was About The Same As The Relationship Of Christianity To The Fish Or The Lamb.

You Are What You Think You Eat.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Still Life With Woodpecker

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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