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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.

-Tom Robbins

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Life's An Offensive Proposition

Tom Robbins

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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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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?.

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.

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.

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.

When I Go To The Shore, I Take Along The Poems Of Pablo Neruda. I Suppose It's Because The Poems Are Simultaneously Lush And Ripe And Kind Of Lazy, Yet Throbbing With Life - Like Summer Itself.

Outlaws Are Can Openers In The Supermarket Of Life.

Still Life With Woodpecker

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?

Hold On To Your Divine Blush, Your Innate Rosy Magic, Or End Up Brown. Once You're Brown, You'll Find Out You're Blue. As Blue As Indigo. And You Know What That Means. Indigo. Indigoing. Indigone.

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

What Bothers Most Critics Of My Work Is The Goofiness. One Reviewer Said I Need To Make Up My Mind If Want To Be Funny Or Serious. My Response Is That I Will Make Up My Mind When God Does, Because Life Is A Commingling Of The Sacred And The Profane, Good And Evil. To Try And Separate Them Is Fallacy.

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.

The Beauty Of Simplicity Is The Complexity It Attracts.

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.

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.

Love Is The Ultimate Outlaw.

The Beet Is The Most Intense Of Vegetables

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

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.

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.

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.

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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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.

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.

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'.

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

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

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

It Is What It Is

Every Individual Has To Assume Responsibility For His Or Her Own Actions, Even The Poor And The Young. A Social System That Decrees Otherwise Is Inviting Intellectual Atrophy And Spiritual Stagnation.

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.

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

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.

When Two People Meet And Fall In Love, There's A Sudden Rush Of Magic. Magic Is Just Naturally Present Then. We Tend To Feed On That Gratuitous Magic Without Striving To Make Any More. One Day We Wake Up And Find That The Magic Is Gone. We Hustle To Get It Back, But By Then It's Usually Too Late, We've Used It Up. What We Have To Do Is Work Like Hell At Making Additional Magic Right From The Start. It's Hard Work, But If We Can Remember To Do It, We Greatly Improve Our Chances Of Making Love Stay.

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

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.

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.

Eating A Raw Oyster Is Like French Kissing A Mermaid.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Dreams Don't Come True. Dreams Are True.

Love Is Dope, Not Chicken Soup.

...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.

If Little Else, The Brain Is An Educational Toy.

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

A Sneeze Travels At A Peak Velocity Of Two Hundred Miles Per Hour. A Burp, More Slowly; A Fart, Slower Yet. But A Kiss Thrown By Fingers- Its Departure Is Sudden, Its Arrival Ambiguous, And There Is No Source That Can State With Authority What Speeds Are Reached In Its Flight.

Hawaii Made The Mouth Of Her Soul Water.

First I Think I Was Interested In The Stories, And Later On, I Became More Interested In The Language Itself, So The Stories Became Almost Secondary, But It Was Kind Of A Background Music For My Life.

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

At The Typewriter You Find Out Who You Are.

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

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

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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Reality Whistles A Different Tune Underwater.

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

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

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

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

I Rather Like The Smell Of Absurdity In The Morning.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

And It Rained A Fever. And It Rained A Silence. And It Rained A Sacrifice. And It Rained A Miracle. And It Rained Sorceries And Saturnine Eyes Of The Totem.

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)

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

When They Tell You To Grow Up, They Mean Stop Growing.

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

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.

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

The Only Question Is How To Make Love Stay.

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

Does Koala Bear Poop Smell Like Cough Drops?

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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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.

Once, In A Spasm Of Sappiness, You Asked Q-jo If She Thought Your Dreams Would Ever Come True. 'you Aren't Talking About Dreams,' She Corrected You, 'you're Referring To Your Pathetic Bourgeoisie Ambitions. Dreams Don't Come True. Dreams Are True.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Normality Is The Great Neurosis Of Civilization.

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.

Red Hair Is Caused By Sugar And Lust.

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

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.

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

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

Why Procrastinate When You Can Precognitate?

Procrastinating

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.

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.

Heaven Is Living In Your Hopes And Hell Is Living In Your Fears. It's Up To Each Individual Which One He Chooses.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Still Life With Woodpecker

Get Yourself In That Extreme State Of Being Next To Madness. You Should Always Write With An Erection. Even If You're A Woman.

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

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

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.

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

Still Life With Woodpecker

People Of Ze Wurl, Relax!

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.

Often, Moreover, It Is...that Aspect Of Our Being That Society Finds Eccentric, Ridiculous, Or Disagreeable, That Holds Our Sweet Waters, Our Secret Well Of Happiness, The Key To Our Equanimity In Malevolent Climes.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

Now That I'm In Love, I Haven't A Clue. Now That I'm In Love, I'm Completely Stupid On The Subject.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Some Praise Me, Some Blame Me. I Go The Other Way. Sometimes Those Things That Attract The Most Attention To Us Are The Things Which Afford Us The Greatest Privacy

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.

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

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.

Magic Things Are Fond Of Deceptions.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Unhappiness Is The Ultimate Form Of Self-indulgence.

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.

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

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

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

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 More Advertising I See, The Less I Want To Buy.

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.

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.

His Voice Wore No Pants.

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.

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.

A Person's Looking For A Simple Truth To Live By, There It Is. Choice. To Refuse To Passively Accept What We've Been Handed By Nature Or Society, But To Choose For Ourselves. Choice. That's The Difference Between Emptiness And Substance, Between A Life Actually Lived And A Wimpy Shadow Cast On An Office Wall.

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

Christianity... Is An Eastern Religion.

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

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

Breathe Properly. Stay Curious. And Eat Your Beets.

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.

Individualism Is Bad For Business - Though Absolutely Necessary For Freedom, Progressive Knowledge, And Any Possible Interface With The Transcendent.

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.

Human Folly Does Not Impede The Turning Of The Stars.

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.

Eighty Percent Of Love Is Smell.

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

Never Be Afraid To Make A Fool Of Yourself. The Furthest Out You Can Go Is The Best Place To Be.

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.

Let Us, Rather, Gather Facts, All The Facts, Regardless Of Aesthetic Appeal Or Theoretical Social Worth, And Spread Those Facts Before Us Not As The Soothsayer Spreads The Innards Of A Turkey But As A Newspaper Spreads Its Columns. Let Us Be Journalists, Then. And Like All Good Journalists, We Shall Present Our Facts In An Order That Will Satisfy The Famous Five W's: Wow, Whoopee, Wahoo, Why-not And Whew.

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

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

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

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

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