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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.

-Tom Robbins

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The Unhappy Person Resents

Tom Robbins

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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.

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His Voice Wore No Pants.

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

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Unhappiness Is The Ultimate Form Of Self-indulgence.

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Characteristics

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

Minds Were Made For Blowing.

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Usually, Autobiography Is Such An Indulgence Of The Ego.

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Christianity... Is An Eastern Religion.

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Human Folly Does Not Impede The Turning Of The Stars.

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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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

This May Be Said For The Last Quarter Of The Twentieth Century: The Truism That If We Want A Better World We Will Have To Be Better People Came To Be Acknowledge, If Not Thoroughly Understood, By A Significantly Large Minority.

The Trouble With You Is That The Only Way You Can Communicate Is Through Art. You’ve Never Learned To Communicate Your Feelings To A Man. You Don’t Even Want To Communicate In A Relationship. You Think That If You Open Up To Love, You’ll Lose Your Independence Or Your Self-expression Or Creativity Or Whatever You Call All That Passionate, Wonderful Stuff That Makes You Feel Alive Inside.

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

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.

There Is A Sense In Which A Painted Stick Is A Stick In Bloom. This Stick Points To The Hidden Face Of God. Sometimes It Points To You.

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

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

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.

Does Koala Bear Poop Smell Like Cough Drops?

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.

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

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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.

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

I'm An Outlaw, Not A Philosopher, But I Know This Much: There's Meaning In Everything, All Things Are Connected, And A Good Champagne Is A Drink.' Bernard Began To Sing Again. Timidly, Leigh-cheri Joined In. Between Verses, They Opened Another Bottle. The Popping Of Its Cork Echoed Throughout The Great Stone Chamber. Of The Three Billion People On Earth, Only Bernard And Leigh-cheri Heard The Popping Of The Cork And Its Echoes. Only Bernard And Leigh-cheri Passed Out Under The Tablecloth.

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.

Reality Whistles A Different Tune Underwater.

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.

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.

Most Americans Pay Lip Service To The Idea Of Freedom, But Can't Handle Real Freedom.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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)

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

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.

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

Love Is The Ultimate Outlaw. It Just Won't Adhere To Any Rules. The Most Any Of Us Can Do Is Sign On As Its Accomplice.

Be Your Own Flying Saucer! Rescue Yourself!

I Show Up In My Writing Room At Approximately 10 A.m. Every Morning Without Fail. Sometimes My Muse Sees Fit To Join Me There And Sometimes She Doesn't, But She Always Knows Where I'll Be. She Doesn't Need To Go Hunting In The Taverns Or On The Beach Or Drag The Boulevard Looking For Me.

But Do We Know How To Make Love Stay?' I Can't Even Think About It. The Best I Can Do Is Play It Day By Day.

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.

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.

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

What Mattered To Abu Was The Music Of The Sentence. 'a Shadow Does Not Belong To The Object That Casts It.' To Abu, It Was A Little Poem. And In General, It Was The Poetics, The Music Of Things That Tossed His Confetti.

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.

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.

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.

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

I Have Always Been A Romantic, One Of Those People Who Believes That A Woman In Pink Circus Tights Contains All The Secrets Of The Universe.

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

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

Each Time We Exhale, The World Ends; When We Inhale, There Can Be, If We Allow It, Rebirth And Spiritual Renewal. It All Transpires Inside Of Us. In Our Consciousness, In Our Hearts. All The Time.

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.

You Are An Ignorant Schoolgirl. You Think Civilization Is A Good Thing.

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

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.

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

America Is A Nation Of 270 Million People: 100 Million Of Them Are Gangsters, Another 100 Million Are Hustlers, 50 Million Are Complete Lunatics, And Every Single One Of Us Is Secretly In Show Business. Isn't That Fabulous?

And 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.

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 Fact Is, What I Hated In The Church Was What I Hated In Society. Namely, Authoritarians. Power Freaks. Rigid Dogmatists. Those Greedy, Underloved, Undersexed Twits Who Want To Run Everything. While The Rest Of Us Are Busy Living - Busy Tasting And Testing And Hugging And Kissing And Goofing And Growing - They Are Busy Taking Over.

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Juliette Binoche

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