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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.

-Tom Robbins

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Modern Romans Insisted That

Tom Robbins

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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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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?

And What Would Our Ideas Of God, Of Religion, Be Like If They Had Come To Us Through The Minds Of Women? Ever Think Of That?

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.

If The Novelist Isn't Surprised By Where His Book Ends Up, He Or She Probably Hasn't Written Anything Worth Remembering.

The One Thing Emphasized In Any Creative Writing Course Is 'write What You Know,' And That Automatically Drives A Wooden Stake Through The Heart Of Imagination. If They Really Understood The Mysterious Process Of Creating Fiction, They Would Say, 'you Can Write About Anything You Can Imagine.'

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.

Minds Were Made For Blowing.

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

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

Jackson Pollock Said Once, "i Don't Really Feel That Many People In This World Are Alive." He Said, "that's Why I Like You, Tom. You're Alive."

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.

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.

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

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

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

From The Air, Vatican City Looked Like A Marble Monopoly Set. The Church Owned All The Property From Broadwalk To Illinois Avenue, Has Three Hotels On Every Lot, And No Matter How Often It Tossed The Dice You Just Knew It Would Never Land On Go To Jail, It Would Be Forever Passing Go And Collecting $200.

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.

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

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

The Only Question Is How To Make Love Stay.

Hawaii Made The Mouth Of Her Soul Water.

It Was Autumn, The Springtime Of Death.

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

Breathe Properly. Stay Curious. And Eat Your Beets.

I Think When I'm 80 Years Old, 85, Hopefully, I'll Be Pushed Around In A Wheelchair By A Red-headed Nurse With Panty Outline. She'll Make Me Little Tequila Sunrises And I'll Read My Complete Works Then. Then, I'll Decide Whether I Think I've Done Something Good Or Not. I'll Reserve My Judgment Until Then.

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.

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

His Voice Wore No Pants.

Using Words To Describe Magic Is Like Using A Screwdriver To Cut Roast Beef.

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?'

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.

Dreams Don't Come True. Dreams Are True.

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?.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

The Enemy Is The Tyranny Of The Dull Mind.

There Are People In This World Who Can Wear Whale Masks And People Who Cannot, And The Wise Know To Which Group They Belong.

You Are What You Think You Eat.

One Of My Books Is A Hallucinogen, An Aphrodisiac, A Mood Elevator, An Intellectual Garage Door Opener, And A Metaphysical Trash Compactor. They'll Do Everything Except Rotate Your Tires.

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.

The Inability To Correctly Perceive Reality Is Often Responsible For Humans' Insane Behavior. And Every Time They Substitute An All-purpose, Sloppy Slang Word For The Words That Would Accurately Describe An Emotion Or A Situation, It Lowers Their Reality Orientations, Pushes Them Farther From Shore, Out Onto The Foggy Waters Of Alienation And Confusion.

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

Falling In Love

All Dreams Continue In The Beyond.

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.

And It Rained A Screaming. And It Rained A Rawness. And It Rained A Plasma. And It Rained A Disorder.

It Is More Important To Be Free Than To Be Happy.

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.

Success Can Eliminate As Many Options As Failure.

Success Failure

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.

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.

Certainly That Sputterless Little Candleflame Of The Mediocre Mind Known As 'common Sense' Has Never Produced Anything Worth Celebrating.

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 There’s A Thing, A Scene, Maybe, An Image That You Want To See Real Bad, That You Need To See But It Doesn’t Exist In The World Around You, At Least Not In The Form That You Envision, Then You Create It So That You Can Look At It And Have It Around, Or Show It To Other People Who Wouldn’t Have Imagined It Because They Perceive Reality In A More Narrow, Predictable Way. And That’s It. That’s All An Artist Does.

The Enemy Of The Black Is Not The White. The Enemy Of Capitalist Is Not Communist, The Enemy Of Homosexual Is Not Heterosexual, The Enemy Of Jew Is Not Arab, The Enemy Of Youth Is Not The Old, The Enemy Of Hip Is Not Redneck, The Enemy Of Chicano Is Not Gringo And The Enemy Of Women Is Not Men. We All Have The Same Enemy. The Enemy Is The Tyranny Of The Dull Mind. The Enemy Is Every Expert Who Practices Technocratic Manipulation, The Enemy Is Every Proponent Of Standardization And The Enemy Is Every Victim Who Is So Dull And Lazy And Weak As To Allow Himself To Be Manipulated And Standardized.

I Don't Want To Give The Impression That I Hold Daily Conversations With My Household Appliances, Although My Toaster Is As Old As Drew Barrymore And Almost As Talented.

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.

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

The Only Authority I Respect Is The One That Causes Butterflies To Fly South In Fall And North In Springtime.

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

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

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

…he Glanced Over His Shoulder At Her, Regarding Her, As He Often Did Before They Made Love, As If She Were A Lost Continent About To Be Rediscovered.

If We're Ever Going To Get The World Back On A Natural Footing, Back In Tune With Natural Rhythyms, If We're Going To Nurture The Earth And Protect It And Have Fun With It And Learn From It - Which Is What Mothers Do With Their Children - Then We've Got To Put Technology (an Aggressive Masculine System) In Its Proper Place, Which Is That Of A Tool To Be Used Sparingly, Joyfully, Gently And Only In The Fullest Cooperation With Nature. Nature Must Govern Technology, Not The Other Way Around.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

I Sweet Potato What I Sweet Potato.

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.

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.

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.

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

Most Novelists Write About Twisted Lives.

Don't Confuse Symmetry With Balance.

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?

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

I Rather Like The Smell Of Absurdity In The Morning.

Summer Had Come To Sit On New York's Face.

Somewhere In The Archives Of Crudest Instinct Is Recorded The Truth That It Is Better To Be Endangered And Free Than Captive And Comfortable.

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

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.

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.

There Are Essential And Inessential Insanities... Inessential Insanities Get One In Trouble With Oneself. Essential Insanities Get One In Trouble With Others. It's Always Preferable To Be In Trouble With Others. In Fact, It May Be Essential.

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

Life Is Hard If You Think It's Hard.

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

Characteristics

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.

…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; ….

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.

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

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

...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.

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.

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.

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

If Complexity Doesn't Beat You, Paradox Will.

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

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

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

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.

Should You Fail To Pilot Your Own Ship, Don't Be Surprised At What Inappropriate Port You Find Yourself Docked.

Finding Yourself

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.

But Why Diminish Your Soul Being Run-of-the-mill At Something? Mediocrity: Now There Is Ugliness For You. Mediocrity's A Hairball Coughed Up On The Persian Carpet Of Creation.

At The Typewriter You Find Out Who You Are.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

I Think Science Has Begun To Demonstrate That Aging Is A Disease. If It Is, It Can Be Cured.

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.

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

The Beauty Of Simplicity Is The Complexity It Attracts.

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.

My Personal Motto Has Always Been: Joy In Spite Of Everything. Not Just [mindless] Joy, But Joy In Spite Of Everything. Recognizing The Inequities And The Suffering And The Corruption And All That But Refusing To Let It Rain On My Parade. And I Advocate This To Other People.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

The Ultimate End Of Any Ideology Is Totalitarianism.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

People Are Never Perfect, But Love Can Be.

Still Life With Woodpecker

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.

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.

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.

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.'

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

If It Is Committed In The Name Of God Or Country, There Is No Crime So Heinous That The Public Will Not Forgive It.

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

Employing Women As My Primary Protagonists Has Allowed Me To Step Outside Of Myself, To Distance Myself From My Own Personality, Far More Easily Than Were I To Look At Events From A Masculine Perspective.

Approfondement Is A French Word That Means 'playing Easily In The Deep.'

If You Want To Make A Name For Yourself, The Oldest Trick In The Book Is To Attack What Everybody Else Reveres.

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

It Is What It Is

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.

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.

Who Knows How To Make Love Stay? Tell Love You Are Going To The Junior's Deli On Flatbush Avenue In Brooklyn To Pick Up A Cheesecake, And If Love Stays, It Can Have Half.

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

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

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.

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

Human Folly Does Not Impede The Turning Of The Stars.

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

Don't Talk About It - You'll Talk It Away. Let The Ideas Flow From Your Mind To The Page Without Exposing Them To Air. Especially Hot Air.

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.

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

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.

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

Love Is Dope, Not Chicken Soup.

Cries For Help Are Frequently Inaudible.

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

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

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