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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.

-Tom Robbins

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The Only Bubble In

Tom Robbins

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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.

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The Full Moon - The Mandala Of The Sky.

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

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.

Philosophers Have Argued For Centuries About How Many Angels Can Dance On The Head Of A Pin, But Materialists Have Known All Along That It Depends On Whether They Are Jitterbugging Or Dancing Cheek To Cheek.

The Beauty Of Simplicity Is The Complexity It Attracts.

There Are Many Things Worth Living For, A Few Things Worth Dying For, And Nothing Worth Killing For.

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 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 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.

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

The Goal Of This Generation's Pioneers Should Be To Restrict Procreation And Limit Consumption. They Should Also Take Every Opportunity To Make Themselves Happy, Realizing That The Key To Self-generated Happiness (the Only Reliable Kind) Is The Refusal To Take Oneself Too Seriously.

I Believe In Nothing, Everything Is Sacred. I Believe In Everything, Nothing Is Sacred.

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.

At The Typewriter You Find Out Who You Are.

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

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 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.

Be Your Own Flying Saucer! Rescue Yourself!

Religions Lead Us To Believe That The Soul Is The Ultimate Family Jewel And That In Return For Our Mindless Obedience, They Can Secure It For Us In Their Vaults, Or At Least Insure It Against Fire And Theft. They Are Mistaken.

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.

Me? I Stand For Uncertainty, Insecurity, Bad Taste, Fun, And Things That Go Boom In The Night.

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

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

Still Life With Woodpecker

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

...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.

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

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.

Love Makes The World Go 'round, It's True, But Lust Stops The World In Its Tracks; Love Renders Bearable The Passage Of Time, Lust Causes Time To Stand Still, Lust Kills Time, Which Is Not To Say That It Wastes It Or Whiles It Aimlessly Away But Rather That It Annihilates It, Cancels It, Extirpates It From Continuum; Preventing, While Lasts, Any Lapse Into The Tense And Shabby Woes Of Temporal Society, Lust Is The Thousand-pound Odometer Needle On The Dashboard Of The Absolute.

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

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.

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.

But The Center Can Be A Harmful Place For One Who Has Lived So Long On The Edge.... Normality Is The Great Neurosis Of Civilization.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

Should One Be Shallow Enough To View Existence As A System Of Rewards And Punishments, One Soon Learns That We Pay As Dearly For Our Triumphs As We Do For Our Defeats.

People Aren't Trees, So It Is False When They Speak Of Roots.

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.

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

I Sweet Potato What I Sweet Potato.

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

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

I Am Cheerful. I Don't Know If I'm Happy. There Is A Difference, You Know.

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

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?

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.

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

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

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

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

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

If Love Eats The Donut, Does Time Eat The Hole?

This Is The Room Of The Wolfmother Wallpaper.

The Enemy Is The Tyranny Of The Dull Mind.

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

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.

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.

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?.

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.

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.

As Expected, You Get His Machine. Someday, Even The "call Of Nature" Will Be Answered By A Machine.

Most Novelists Write About Twisted Lives.

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

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.

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

They Fell Asleep Smiling. It Is To Erase The Fixed Smiles Of Sleeping Couples That Satan Trained Roosters To Crow At Five In The Morning.

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

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.

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.

The Only Question Is How To Make Love Stay.

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.

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.

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.

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

Still Life With Woodpecker

Brilliantly, Ecstatically, Irrepressibly. This Is The Way To Burn

Most Really Good Fiction Is Compelled Into Being. It Comes From A Kind Of Uncalculated Innocence. You Need Not Have Your Ending In Mind Before You Commence. Indeed, You Need Not Be Certain Of Exactly What's Going To Transpire On Page 2. If You Know The Whole Story In Advance, Your Novel Is Probably Dead Before You Begin It. Give It Some Room To Breathe, To Change Direction, To Surprise You. Writing A Novel Is Not So Much A Project As A Journey, A Voyage, An Adventure.

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.

There Are Two Kinds Of People In This World : Those Who Believe There Are Two Kinds Of People In This World And Those Who Are Smart Enough To Know Better.

You Are What You Think You Eat.

Love Is The Ultimate Outlaw.

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?

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

Words On A Page Can Hypnotize You If The Rhythm Is Right

When A Culture Is Being Dumbed Down As Effectively As Ours Is, Its Narrative Arts (literature, Film, Theatre) Seem To Vacillate Between The Brutal And The Bland, Sometimes In The Same Work.

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 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.

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 New Wrinkle Is That Escalating Advances In Technology Are Nourishing The Narcissistic Ego The Way Chicken Manure Nourishes A Rose Bush, While Exploding Worldwide Population Is Allowing Its Effects To Multiply Geometrically.

O Tequila, Savage Water Of Sorcery, What Confusion And Mischief Your Sly, Rebellious Drops Do Generate

Christianity... Is An Eastern Religion.

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?

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

Finding Yourself

The Beet Is The Most Intense Of Vegetables

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

Don't Confuse Symmetry With Balance.

I Want To Travel On A Train That Smells Like Snowflakes. I Want To Sip In Cafes That Smell Like Comets. Under The Pressure Of My Step, I Want The Streets To Emit The Precise Odor Of A Diamond Necklace. I Want The Newspapers I Read To Smell Like The Violins Left In Pawnshops By Weeping Hobos On Christmas Eve. I Want To Carry Luggage That Reeks Of The Neurons In Einstein's Brain. I Want A City's Gases To Smell Like The Golden Belly Hairs Of The Gods. And When I Gaze At A Televised Picture Of The Moon, I Want To Detect, From A Distance Of 239,000 Miles, The Aroma Of Fresh Mozzarella.

It Was Autumn, The Springtime Of Death.

The Illusion Of The Seventh Veil Was The Illusion That You Could Get Somebody Else To Do It For You. To Think For You. To Hang On Your Cross. The Priest, The Rabbi, The Imam, The Swami, The Philosophical Novelist Were Traffic Cops, At Best. They Might Direct You Through A Busy Intersection, But They Wouldn't Follow You Home And Park Your Car.

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.

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.

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.

Red Hair Is Caused By Sugar And Lust.

Redheads Are Said To Be Children Of The Moon, Thwarted By The Sun And Addicted To Sex And Sugar.

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.

I Go Into A Gallery Or Museum, And I Realize That I Don't Have To Formulate Any Opinions If I Don't Want To. I Don't Have To Think This Thing Through And Write About It At Any Great Length. I Can Think About It If I Want To; If Not, I Can Just Walk Out. So I Can Enjoy Painting Really A Lot More Than I Could When I Had That Sort Of Pressure.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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."

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

Still Life With Woodpecker

Eighty Percent Of Love Is Smell.

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.

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.

Whatever Goes Wrong Can Be Used To Your Advantage, Providing It Goes Wrong Enough.

Normality Is The Great Neurosis Of Civilization.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Teachers Who Offer You The Ultimate Answers Do Not Possess The Ultimate Answers, For If They Did, They Would Know That The Ultimate Answers Cannot Be Given, They Can Only Be Received.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Listen, I've Been Sick Ever Since I Started Working Here, But Today I'm Well And I Won't Be In Anymore.

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.

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

It Is What It Is

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

If By The Quarter Of The Twentieth Century Godliness Wasn’t Next To Something More Interesting Than Cleanliness, It Might Be Time To Reevaluate Our Notions Of Godliness.

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?

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 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.

Hawaii Made The Mouth Of Her Soul Water.

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

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 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.

I Never Outline. I Don't Work From An Outline. I Have No Idea Where The Book Is Going. I Mean, Even Two-thirds Of The Way Through, I Don't Know How It's Going To End.

What Bothers Me Today Is The Lack Of, Well, I Guess You'd Call It Authentic Experience. So Much Is A Sham. So Much Is Artificial, Synthetic, Watered-down, And Standardized...we're Standardizing People, Their Goals, Their Ideas. The Sham Is Everywhere.

Why Procrastinate When You Can Precognitate?

Procrastinating

Switters Was Actually Quite Fond Of Seattle's Weather, And Not Merely Because Of It's Ambivalence. He Liked It's Subtle, Muted Qualities And The Landscape That Those Qualities Encouraged If Not Engendered: Vistas That Seemed To Have Been Sketched With A Sumi Brush Dipped In Quicksilver And Green Tea. It Was Fresh, It Was Clean, It Was Gently Primal, And Mystically Suggestive.

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

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.

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

But Say You've Inflated Your Soul To The Size Of A Beach Ball And It's Soaking Into The Mystery Like Wine Into A Mattress. What Have You Accomplished? Well, Long Term, You May Have Prepared Yourself For A Successful Metamorphosis, An Almost Inconceivable Transformation To Be Precipitated By Your Death Or By Some Great Worldwide Eschatological Whoopjamboreehoo. You May Have. No One Can Say For Sure.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

It Is Better To Be Small, Colorful, Sexy, Careless, And Peaceful.

People Are Never Perfect, But Love Can Be.

Still Life With Woodpecker

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

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

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

If You're Honest, You Sooner Or Later Have To Confront Your Values. Then You're Forced To Separate What Is Right From What Is Merely Legal. This Puts You Metaphysically On The Run. America Is Full Of Metaphysical Outlaws.

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

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.

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.

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

In General, I've Found Female Protagonists More Intriguing To Work With Than Males. I Cherish Women And Have Always Preferred Their Company, Reveling In Their Perfumes, Their Contours, Their Finer-grained Sensibilities, Lunar Intuitions, Nurturing Instincts And Relatively Unfettered Emotions--although I'm Certainly Not Unaware That There Are Plenty Of Neurotic, Uptight, Stupid Women In The World.

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.

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

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.

Breathe Properly. Stay Curious. And Eat Your Beets.

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.

You Have Taught Us Much. Come With Us And Join The Movement." "this Movement Of Yours, Does It Have Slogans?" Inquired The Chink. "right On!" They Cried. And They Quoted Him Some. "your Movement, Does It Have A Flag?" Asked The Chink. "you Bet!" And They Described Their Emblem. "and Does Your Movement Have Leaders?" "great Leaders." "then Shove It Up Your Butts," Said The Chink. "i Have Taught You Nothing.

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.

Minds Were Made For Blowing.

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.

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.

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

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

Reality Whistles A Different Tune Underwater.

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.

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Catherine Deneuve

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