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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.

-Tom Robbins

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The Theme Of Corporate

Tom Robbins

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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.

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

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

The Beauty Of Simplicity Is The Complexity It Attracts.

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.

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?

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?

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?.

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.

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?

I Am Looking For The Novelists Whose Writing Is An Extension Of Their Intellect Rather Than An Extension Of Their Neurosis.

What Is Politics, After All, But The Compulsion To Preside Over Property And Make Others People's Decisions For Them? Liberty, The Very Opposite Of Ownership And Control, Cannot, Then, Result From Political Action, Either At The Polls Or At The Barricades, But Rather Evolves Out Of Attitude. If It Results From Anything, It Must Be Levity.

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.

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.

From The Outside, My Life May Look Chaotic, But Inside I Feel Like Some Kind Of Monk Licking An Ice Cream Cone While Straddling A Runaway Horse.

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.

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

Christians, And Some Jews, Claim We're In The "end Times," But They've Been Saying This Off And On For More Than Two Thousand Years.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

The World Is A Wonderfully Weird Place, Consensual Reality Is Significantly Flawed, No Institution Can Be Trusted, Certainty Is A Mirage, Security A Delusion, And The Tyranny Of The Dull Mind Forever Threatens -- But Our Lives Are Not As Limited As We Think They Are, All Things Are Possible, Laughter Is Holier Than Piety, Freedom Is Sweeter Than Fame, And In The End It's Love And Love Alone That Really Matters.

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.

You Are What You Think You Eat.

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.

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

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

Falling In Love

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.

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.

How We Shape Our Understanding Of Others' Lives Is Determined By What We Find Memorable In Them, And That In Turn Is Determined Not By Any Potentially Accurate Overview Of Another's Personality But Rather By The Tension And Balance That Exist In Our Daily Relationships.

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.'

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

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

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.

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

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.

Does Koala Bear Poop Smell Like Cough Drops?

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

It Was Autumn, The Springtime Of Death.

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.

Love Is The Ultimate Outlaw.

Data In Our Psychic Program Is Often Nonlinear, Nonhierarchical, Archaic, Alive, And Teeming With Paradox. Simply Booting Up Is A Challenge, If Not For No Other Reason Than That Most Of Us Find Acknowledging The Unknowable And Monitoring Its Intrusions Upon The Familiar And Mundane More Than A Little Embarrassing.

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.

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.

Don't Be Outraged, Be Outrageous.

Those Same Forces That Drive A Genius To Create The Things Or Ideas That Entertain Or Enlighten Us Often Gobble So Much Of His Personality That He Has None Left For The Social Graces.

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.

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.

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

This Is The Room Where Jezebel Frescoed Her Eyelids With History's Tragic Glitter

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

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.

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.

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.

Breathe Properly. Stay Curious. And Eat Your Beets.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

...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.

People Are Never Perfect, But Love Can Be.

Still Life With Woodpecker

Zippers Are Primal And Modern At The Very Same Time. On The One Hand, Your Zipper Is Primitive And Reptilian, On The Other, Mechanical And Slick. A Zipper Is Where The Industrial Revolution Meets The Cobra Cult.

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?

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.

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

...language Is Not The Frosting, It's The Cake.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Would You Complain Because A Beautiful Sunset Doesn't Have A Future Or A Shooting Star A Payoff? And Why Should Romance 'lead Anywhere'? Passion Isn't A Path Through The Woods. Passion Is The Woods.

A Spirit Cannot Soar With Only One Wing.

I Rather Like The Smell Of Absurdity In The Morning.

Be Your Own Flying Saucer! Rescue Yourself!

Minds Were Made For Blowing.

The Beet Is The Most Intense Of Vegetables. The Radish, Admittedly, Is More Feverish, But The Fire Of The Radish Is A Cold Fire, The Fire Of Discontent, Not Of Passion. Tomatoes Are Lusty Enough, Yet There Runs Through Tomatoes An Undercurrent Of Frivolity. Beets Are Deadly Serious.

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

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

Characteristics

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.

Sounds Travel Through Space Long After Their Wave Patterns Have Ceased To Be Detectable By The Human Ear: Some Cut Right Through The Ionosphere And Barrel On Out Into The Cosmic Heartland, While Others Bounce Around, Eventually Being Absorbed Into The Vibratory Fields Of Earthly Barriers, But In Neither Case Does The Energy Succumb; It Goes On Forever - Which Is Why We, Each Of Us, Should Take Pains To Make Sweet Notes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Red Hair Is Caused By Sugar And Lust.

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

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

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

I Cannot Believe That The Most Delicious Things Were Placed Here Merely To Test Us, To Temp Us, To Make It The More Difficult For Us To Capture The Grand Prize: The Safety Of The Void. To Fashion Of Life Such A Petty Game Is Unworthy Of Both Men And Gods.

Rivers Are The Primal Highways Of Life. From The Crack Of Time, They Had Borne Men's Dreams, And In Their Lovely Rush To Elsewhere, Fed Our Wanderlust, Mimicked Our Arteries, And Charmed Our Imaginations In A Way The Static Pond Or Vast And Savage Ocean Never Could.

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.

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.

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

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

True Stability Results When Presumed Order And Presumed Disorder Are Balanced. A Truly Stable System Expects The Unexpected, Is Prepared To Be Disrupted, Waits To Be Transformed.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

The Ultimate End Of Any Ideology Is Totalitarianism.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

If Little Else, The Brain Is An Educational Toy.

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

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.

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.

It Is As If The Soul Of The Continent Is Weeping. Why Does It Weep? It Weeps For The Bones Of The Buffalo. It Weeps For Magic That Has Been Forgotten. It Weeps For The Decline Of Poets.it Weepsfor The Black People Who Think Like White People.it Weepsfor The Indians Who Think Like Settlers.it Weepsfor The Children Who Think Like Adults.it Weepsfor The Free Who Think Like Prisoners.most Of All, It Weepsfor The Cowgirls Who Think Like Cowboys.

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

Admittedly, Having A Bit Of Disposable Cash In The Bank Can Give You A Sense Of Buddhistic Calm, And Despite The Fallacy Involved, That's Probably Preferable To The Bonafide Adventure Of Robbing A Bank. A Better Alternative, However, Is To Learn To Be At Peace Even When Common Sense (a Highly Overrated Virtue) Would Lead You To Believe That Someone In Your Situation Ought To Feel Threatened And Insecure.

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

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

Don't Confuse Symmetry With Balance.

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

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.

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

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?'

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

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.

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

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

Hardly A Pure Science, History Is Closer To Animal Husbandry Than It Is To Mathematics In That It Involves Selective Breeding. The Principal Difference Between The Husbandryman And The Historian Is That The Former Breeds Sheep Or Cows Or Such And The Latter Breeds (assumed) Facts. The Husbandryman Uses His Skills To Enrich The Future, The Historian Uses His To Enrich The Past. Both Are Usually Up To Their Ankles In Bullshit.

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

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

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

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

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.

Albert Camus Wrote That The Only Serious Question Is Whether To Kill Yourself Or Not. Tom Robbins Wrote That The Only Serious Question Is Whether Time Has A Beginning And An End. Camus Clearly Got Up On The Wrong Side Of Bed, And Robbins Must Have Forgotten To Set The Alarm. 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.

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

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

The Full Moon - The Mandala Of The Sky.

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

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

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.

As Any Car Freak Will Tell You, The Old Models Are The Most Beautiful, Even If They Aren't The Most Efficient. People Who Sacrifice Beauty For Efficiency Get What They Deserve.

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

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.

There Is A Similarity Between Juggling And Composing On The Typewriter. The Trick Is, When You Spill Something, Make It Look Like A Part Of The Act.

Still Life With Woodpecker

This Did Not Annoy Amanda For It Had Long Been Her Theory That Human Beings Were Invented By Water As A Device For Transporting Itself From One Place To Another.

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

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

Still Life With Woodpecker

The Only Question Is How To Make Love Stay.

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

The Trickster's Function Is To Break Taboos, Create Mischief, Stir Things Up. In The End, The Trickster Gives People What They Really Want, Some Sort Of Freedom.

Most Novelists Write About Twisted Lives.

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 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.

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.

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

Early Religions Were Like Muddy Ponds With Lots Of Foliage. Concealed There, The Fish Of The Soul Could Splash And Feed. Eventually, However, Religions Became Aquariums. Then Hatcheries. From Farm Fingerling To Frozen Fish Stick Is A Short Swim.

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.

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

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

Very Few People Can Write In A Crowd. This Is A Very Solitary Occupation. I Have Known People More Talented Than Me Who Never Made It. And The Primary Reason Was Always That They Couldn't Stand To Be Alone For Several Hours A Day. Any Writer Worth Anything Has Mastered The Art. The Art Of Solitude.

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.

So You Think That You're A Failure, Do You? Well, You Probably Are. What's Wrong With That? In The First Place, If You've Any Sense At All You Must Have Learned By Now That We Pay Just As Dearly For Our Triumphs As We Do For Our Defeats. Go Ahead And Fail. But Fail With Wit, Fail With Grace, Fail With Style. A Mediocre Failure Is As Insufferable As A Mediocre Success. Embrace Failure! Seek It Out. Learn To Love It. That May Be The Only Way Any Of Us Will Ever Be Free.

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

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

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

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.

Reality Is Contradictory. And It's Paradoxical.

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

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

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.

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.

Why Procrastinate When You Can Precognitate?

Procrastinating

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.

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