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

-Tom Robbins

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One Tended To Lose

Tom Robbins

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

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Success Failure

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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.

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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.

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

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Life Is Hard If You Think It's Hard.

Dreams Don't Come True. Dreams Are True.

Hawaii Made The Mouth Of Her Soul Water.

Throughout Most Of Our History, Nothing - Not Flood, Famine, Plague, Or New Weapons - Has Endangered Humanity One-tenth As Much As The Narcissistic Ego, With Its Self-aggrandizing Presumptions And Its Hell-hound Spawn Of Fear And Greed.

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.

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

Reality Whistles A Different Tune Underwater.

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

The Enemy Is The Tyranny Of The Dull Mind.

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.

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

Purpose! Purposes Are For Animals With A Hell Of A Lot More Dignity Than The Human Race! Just Hop On That Strange Torpedo And Ride It To Wherever It's Going.

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

Still Life With Woodpecker

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

Falling In Love

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.

Those Who Shun The Whimsy Of Things Will Experience Rigor Mortis Before Death.

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

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

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

The Bottom Line Is That (a) People Are Never Perfect, But Love Can Be, (b) That Is The One And Only Way That The Mediocre And The Vile Can Be Transformed, And (c) Doing That Makes It That. Loving Makes Love. Loving Makes Itself. We Waste Time Looking For The Perfect Lover Instead Of Creating The Perfect Love. Wouldn't That Be The Way To Make Love Stay?

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

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?.

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.

Actually, There Are Countless Ways To Live Upon This Tremorous Sphere In Mirth And Good Health, And Probably Only One Way - The Industrial, Urbanized, Herding Way - To Live Here Stupidly, And Man Has Hit Upon That One Way.

Well, Daddy, I Used To Believe That Artists Went Crazy In The Process Of Creating The Beautiful Works Of Art That Kept Society Sane. Nowadays, Though, Artists Make Intentionally Ugly Art That’s Only Supposed To Reflect Society Rather Than Inspire It. So I Guess We’re All Loony Together Now, Loony Rats In The Shithouse Of Commercialism.

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.

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.

…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.

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.

Cries For Help Are Frequently Inaudible.

Magic Things Are Fond Of Deceptions.

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.

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

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.

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

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

If You Were Jesus With Missing Years To Kill Where Would You Go?

Peeple Of Zee Wurl, Relax

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 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.

We Approach The Divine By Enlarging Our Souls And Lighting Up Our Brains.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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