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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.

-Tom Robbins

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The Female Characters In

Tom Robbins

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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.

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More From Tom Robbins

Toys Are Made In Heaven, Batteries Are Made In Hell.

If Complexity Doesn't Beat You, Paradox Will.

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

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

Falling In Love

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

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.

The Unhappy Person Resents It When You Try To Cheer Him Up, Because That Means He Has To Stop Dwelling On Himself And Start Paying Attention To The Universe. Unhappiness Is The Ultimate Form Of Self-indulgence. When You're Unhappy, You Get To Pay A Lot Of Attention To Yourself. You Get To Take Yourself Oh So Very Seriously.

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.

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

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

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

The Enemy Is The Tyranny Of The Dull Mind.

Why Procrastinate When You Can Precognitate?

Procrastinating

I Don't Have A Very High Opinion, Actually, Of The World Of Criticism - Or The Practice Of Criticism. I Think I Admire Art Criticism, Criticism Of Painting And Sculpture, Far More Than I Do That Of Say Films And Books, Literary Or Film Criticism. But I Don't Much Like The Practice. I Think There Are An Awful Lot Of Bad People In It.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Still Life With Woodpecker

You Know What I Mean? Real And Unreal, Beautiful And Strange, Like A Dream. It Got Me High As A Kite, But It Didn’t Last Long Enough. It Ended Too Soon And Left Nothing Behind.” That’s How It Is With Dreams,” Said Priscilla. “they’re The Perfect Crime.

A Sense Of Humor...is Superior To Any Religion So Far Devised.

Still Life With Woodpecker

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

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.

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

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

Normality Is The Great Neurosis Of Civilization.

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

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.

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

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

The Earth Is God's Pinball Machine And Each Quake, Tidal Wave, Flash Flood And Volcanic Eruption Is The Result Of A Tilt That Occurs When God, Cheating, Tries To Win Free Games.

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.

The Most Important Thing In Life Is Style. That Is, The Style Of Ones Existence-the Characteristic Mode Of Ones Actions-is Basically, Ultimately What Matters. For If Man Defines Himself By Doing, Then Style Is Doubly Definitive, Because Style Describes The Doing.

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

There's A Certain Buddhistic Calm That Comes From Having... Money In The Bank.

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.

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

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

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

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

Still Life With Woodpecker

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.

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

The Price Of Self-destiny Is Never Cheap, And In Certain Situations It Is Unthinkable. But To Achieve The Marvelous, It Is Precisely The Unthinkable That Must Be Thought.

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

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.

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.

The Beauty Of Simplicity Is The Complexity It Attracts.

Life Is Like A Stew, You Have To Stir It Frequently, Or All The Scum Rises To The Top.

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.

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

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

The Divine Was Beyond Description, Beyond Knowing, Beyond Comprehension. To Say That The Divine Was Creation Divided By Destruction Was As Close As One Could Come To Definition. But The Puny Of Soul, The Dull Of Wit, Weren't Content With That. They Wanted To Hang A Face On The Divine. They Went So Far As To Attribute Petty Human Emotions - Anger, Jealousy, Etc - To It, Not Stopping To Realize That If God Were A Being, Even A Supreme Being, Our Prayers Would Have Bored Him To Death Long Ago.

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.

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

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

A Hamburger Is Warm And Fragrant And Juicy. A Hamburger Is Soft And Nonthreatening. It Personifies The Great Mother Herself Who Has Nourished Us From The Beginning. A Hamburger Is An Icon Of Layered Circles, The Circle Being At Once The Most Spiritual And The Most Sensual Of Shapes. A Hamburger Is Companionable And Faintly Erotic. The Nipple Of The Goddess, The Bountiful Belly-ball Of Eve. You Are What You Think You Eat.

He Who Jokes In The Executioners Face Can Be Destroyed, But Never Defeated.

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.

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.

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

Red Hair Is Caused By Sugar And Lust.

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

Not Naive,' Conch Shell Had Corrected Him. 'he Simply Has Not Been Taught To Fear The Things You Fear.

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.

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

Life Is Hard If You Think It's Hard.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

Be Your Own Flying Saucer! Rescue Yourself!

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

I Sweet Potato What I Sweet Potato.

As A Child, I Was An Imaginary Playmate.

How Can You Admire A Human Who Consciously Embraces The Bland, The Mediocre, And The Safe Rather Than Risk The Suffering That Disappointment Can Bring?

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.

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.

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

Usually, Autobiography Is Such An Indulgence Of The Ego.

Conservatives Understand Halloween, Liberals Only Understand Christmas. If You Want To Control A Population, Don't Give It Social Services, Give It A Scary Adversary.

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.

In The End What Will Prevail Is Your Passion Not Your Tale, For Love Is The Holy Grail.

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

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.

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

Christianity... Is An Eastern Religion.

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?

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.

Madame Lily Devalier Always Asked "where Are You?" In A Way That Insinuated That There Were Only Two Places On Earth One Could Be: New Orleans And Somewhere Ridiculous.

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

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.

Our Individuality Is All, All, That We Have. There Are Those Who Barter It For Security, Those Who Repress It For What They Believe Is The Betterment Of The Whole Society, But Blessed In The Twinkle Of The Morning Star Is The One Who Nurtures It And Rides It In, In Grace And Love And Wit, From Peculiar Station To Peculiar Station Along Life's Bittersweet Route.

When We Can Converse With The Animals, We Will Know The Change Is Halfway Here. When We Can Converse With The Forest, We Will Know The Change Has Come.

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.

You Know A Trillion Times More About Art Than Me. But I’ve Learned That It Isn’t Necessary To Know All That Much. You Just Make What You Wanna See, Right? It’s A Game, Right? It’s Like Being Paid For Dreaming.

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

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

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.

I Travel In Gardens And Bedrooms, Basements And Attics, Around Corners, Through Doorways And Windows, Along Sidewalks, Over Carpets, Down Drainpipes, In The Sky, With Friends, Lovers, Children And Heros; Perceived, Remembered, Imagined, Distorted And Clarified.

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

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.

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

People Tend The Take Everything Too Seriously. Especially Themselves. Yep. And That's Probably What Makes 'em Scared And Hurt So Much Of The Time. Life Is Too Serious To Take That Seriously.

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.

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

If Little Else, The Brain Is An Educational Toy.

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

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

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.

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

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.

A Lot Of Aspiring Writers Are All Ready To Write A Novel, But They Don't Know How To Write Sentences.

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

The Ultimate End Of Any Ideology Is Totalitarianism.

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 Very Act Of Creation Requires Such Focused Concentration That Vast Areas Of Knowledge May Be Completely Overlooked. Well, So What? There Is No Evidence That Generalized Skills Are In Any Way Superior To Specialized Brilliance.

Maybe What I Admired Most About John Steinbeck Is That He Never Mortgaged His 45-acre Heart For A Suite In An Ivory Tower.

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

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.

Fire Is The Reuniting Of Matter With Oxygen. If One Bears That In Mind, Every Blaze May Be Seen As A Reunion, An Occasion Of Chemical Joy.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Truth, From My Perspective, Is That The World, Indeed, Is Ending - And Is Also Being Reborn. It's Been Doing That All Day, Every Day, Forever.

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.

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

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.

…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; ….

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

Still Life With Woodpecker

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.

Success Can Eliminate As Many Options As Failure.

Success Failure

The Devil Doesn't Make Us Do Anything. The Devil, For Example, Doesn't Make Us Mean. Rather, When We're Mean, We Make The Devil. Literally. Our Actions Create Him. Conversely, When We Behave With Compassion, Generosity, And Grace, We Create God In The World.

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

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.

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.

When We Accept Small Wonders, We Qualify Ourselves To Imagine Great Wonders.

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

It Is What It Is

A Spirit Cannot Soar With Only One Wing.

A Lot Of My Work Comes From What In Asia Is Called The 'mind Of Wonder.' There Is Not A Lot Of 'mind Of Wonder' Writing In Contemporary Western Literature. I Think That's What Appeals To The Readers Who Are My Fans.

Leave It To A Naive World-saver Like You To View Our Love As A Sacred Cause When In Actual Fact All It Was Was Some Barking At The Moon.

The Beet Is The Most Intense Of Vegetables

Society Had A Crime Problem. It Hired Cops To Attack Crime. Now Society Has A Cop Problem.

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

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 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.

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

Much More Than An Entertaining Set Of Exaggerated Facts, Fiction Is A Metaphoric Method Of Describing, Dramatizing And Condensing Historical Events, Personal Actions, Psychological States And The Symbolic Knowledge Encoded Within The Collective Unconscious; Things, Events And Conditions That Are Otherwise Too Diffuse And/or Complex To Be Completely Digested Or Appreciated By The Prevailing Culture.

Collective Unconscious

Never Underestimate How Much Assistance, How Much Satisfaction, How Much Comfort, How Much Soul And Transcendence There Might Be In A Well-made Taco And A Cold Bottle Of Beer.

Human Folly Does Not Impede The Turning Of The Stars.

Anyone Who Maintains Absolute Standards Of Good And Evil Is Dangerous. As Dangerous As A Maniac With A Loaded Revolver.

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

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

I Believed In Looking At People As Individuals, Not In Groups. I Hated Groups; Still Do. And I Saw Particularly The University, The University Artists Really Acted As A Group. The Others Didn't So Much, But The University People Took Advantage Of That And Behaved Like A Group, Rather Than As Individuals. They Had A Lot Of Power That Way.

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

Finding Yourself

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.

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

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

Characteristics

Our World Isn't Made Of Earth, Air And Water Or Even Molecules And Atoms; Our World Is Made Of Language.

My Paintings Are Very Strange - Large And Empty, Like Walls. Just The Opposite Of My Writing, Which Is Rich And Juicy.

The Japanese Have Become So Smitten With The Western Condiment - Its Texture As Silky As A Kimono, Its Tang As Understated As The Tang Of Zen - That Today They Have A Word For Mayonnaise Junkie: Mayora.

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

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.

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

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

His Voice Wore No Pants.

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

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

The First Time That She Spread Her Legs For Him It Had Been Like Opening Her Jaws For The Dentist.

Logic Only Gives Man What He Needs... Magic Gives Him What He Wants.

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

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.

If Little Else, The Brain Is An Educational Toy. Why It May Be A Frustrating Play Thing - One Whose Finer Points Recede Just When You Think You Are Mastering Them - It Is Nonetheless Perpetually Fascinating, Frequently Surprising, Occasionally Rewarding, And It Comes Already Assembled. [...] Alas! The Brain Is A Toy That Plays Games Of Its Own. Its Very Most Favorite Game Is The One-thing-leads-to-another Game.

The Principal Difference Between An Adventurer And A Suicide Is That The Adventurer Leaves Himself A Margin Of Escape (the Narrower The Margin The Greater The Adventure), A Margin Whose Width And Length May Be Determined By Unknown Factors But Whose Navigation Is Determined By The Measure Of The Adventurer's Nerve And Wits. It Is Exhilarating To Live By One's Nerves Or Toward The Summit Of One's Wits.

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.

Love Is Very Powerful, But It Has Limits And It's A Costly Mistake To Spread It Too Thin.

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.

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

Of The Seven Deadly Sins, Lust Is Definitely The Pick Of The Litter.

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

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

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.

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.

I'll Bet I'm As Old As You Are." "i'm Older Than Sanskrit." "well, I Was Waitress At The Last Supper." "i'm So Old I Remember When Mcdonald's Had Only Sold A Hundred Burgers." "you Win.

…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.

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

...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.

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.

There Are Essential And Inessential Insanities. The Later Are Solar In Character, The Former Are Linked To The Moon.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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