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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.

-Tom Robbins

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The World Is A

Tom Robbins

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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.

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Eating A Raw Oyster Is Like French Kissing A Mermaid.

I Finish The Book So I Can See How It's Going To End. I Write That First Sentence, And If It's The Right First Sentence, It Leads To The Right Second Sentence And Three Years Later You Have A 500-page Manuscript, But It Really Is Like Going On A Trip, Going On A Journey. It's A Voyage.

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.

Virtually Every Advancement Made By Our Species Since Civilization First Peeked Out Of Its Nest Of Stone Has Been Initiated By Lone Individuals, Mavericks Who More Often Than Not Were Ignored, Mocked, Or Viciously Persecuted By Society And Its Institutions.

But Why Diminish Your Soul Being Run-of-the-mill At Something? Mediocrity: Now There Is Ugliness For You. Mediocrity's A Hairball Coughed Up On The Persian Carpet Of Creation.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

Still Life With Woodpecker

Things. Cosas. Things Attach Themselves Like Leeches To The Human Soul, Then They Bleed Out The Sweetness And The Music And The Primordial Joy Of Being Unencumbered Upon The Land.

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.

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.

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

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.

As Long As A Population Can Be Induced To Believe In A Supernatural Hereafter, It Can Be Oppressed And Controlled. People Will Put Up With All Sorts Of Tyranny, Poverty, And Painful Treatment If They're Convinced That They'll Eventually Escape To Some Resort In The Sky Where Lifeguards Are Superfluous And The Pool Never Closes. Moreover, The Faithful Are Usually Willing To Risk Their Skins In Whatever Military Adventure Their Government May Currently Be Promoting.

The Moon Invented Natural Rhythm. Civilization Uninvented It.

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

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

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.

Any Half-awake Materialist Well Knows - That Which You Hold Holds You.

Still Life With Woodpecker

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

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.

All Dreams Continue In The Beyond.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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

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

Transformation, Liberation And Celebration Are The Themes Of All My Novels.

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

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.

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

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

We Say We Are Earthlings, Not Waterlings. Our Blood Is Closer To Seawater Than Our Bones To Soil, But Thats No Matter. The Sea Is The Cradle We All Rocked Out Of, But Its To Dust That We Go. From The Time That Water Invented Us, We Began To Seek Out Dirt. The Further We Separate Ourselves From The Dirt, The Further We Separate Ourselves From Ourselves. Alienation Is A Disease Of The Unsoiled.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Peeple Of Zee Wurl, Relax

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Gods Have Chosen To Entertain Me With Chronic Eyestrain Headaches. Very Poisonous Episodes. So I Don't Do A Lot Of Reading Anymore Except On Tape.

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.

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

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.

Don't Be Outraged, Be Outrageous.

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

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

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.

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

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.

The Only Question Is How To Make Love Stay.

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

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.

…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; ….

Outlaws Are Can Openers In The Supermarket Of Life.

Still Life With Woodpecker

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

The Enemy Is The Tyranny Of The Dull Mind.

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.

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.

To Emphasize The Afterlife Is To Deny Life. To Concentrate On Heaven Is To Create Hell.

It Was Autumn, The Springtime Of Death.

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.

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

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.

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.

Hawaii Made The Mouth Of Her Soul Water.

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.

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

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

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

I Think Science Has Begun To Demonstrate That Aging Is A Disease. If It Is, It Can Be Cured.

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.

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

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.

On Their Sofas Of Spice And Feathers, The Concubines Also Slept Fretfully. In Those Days The Earth Was Still Flat, And People Dreamed Often Of Falling Over Edges.

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.

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.

If One Yearns To See The Face Of The Divine, One Must Break Out Of The Aquarium, Escape The Fish Farm, To Go Swim Up Wild Cataracts, Dive In Deep Fjords. One Must Explore The Labyrinth Of The Reef, The Shadows Of The Lily Pads. How Limiting, How Insulting To Think Of God As A Benevolent Warden, An Absentee Hatchery Manager Who Imprisons Us In The 'comfort' Of Artificial Pools, Where Intermediaries Sprinkle Our Restrictive Waters With Sanitized Flakes Of Processed Nutriment.

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.

The Author Isn't Altogether Certain That There Is Any Such Thing As Exaggeration. Our Brains Permit Us To Use Such A Wee Fraction Of Their Resources That, In A Sense, Everything We Experience Is A Reduction. We Employ Drugs, Yoga Techniques And Poetics - And A Thousand More Clumsy Methods - In An Effort Just To Bring Things Back Up To Normal.

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.

Why Procrastinate When You Can Precognitate?

Procrastinating

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

People Are Never Perfect, But Love Can Be.

Still Life With Woodpecker

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

Ultimately, The Roast Turkey Must Be Regarded As A Monument To Boomer's Love.

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?

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.

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

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.

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.

The Ultimate End Of Any Ideology Is Totalitarianism.

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.

Some Folks Hide And Some Folks Seek, And Seeking When Its Mindless, Neurotic, Desperate, Or Pusillanimous, Can Be A Form Of Hiding.

Still Life With Woodpecker

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Normality Is The Great Neurosis Of Civilization.

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

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.

Love Easily Confuses Us Because It Is Always In Flux Between Illusion And Substance, Between Memory And Wish, Between Contentment And Need.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Sneeze Travels At A Peak Velocity Of Two Hundred Miles Per Hour. A Burp, More Slowly; A Fart, Slower Yet. But A Kiss Thrown By Fingers- Its Departure Is Sudden, Its Arrival Ambiguous, And There Is No Source That Can State With Authority What Speeds Are Reached In Its Flight.

Serious Reading Is Hardly A Social Activity And Every Halfway Serious Reader Is Perpetually Subject To A Form Of Coitus Interruptus. Family Members Or Friends Who Lack The Desire, The Courage, Or The Opportunity To Burst In On You When There's Some Indication That You Could Be Sexually Entwined Will Seldom Hesitate To Interject Themselves Between You And A Page, Even Though The Act Of Reading Is Often As Intimate And Intense As A Full-fledged Carnal Embrace.

If You Want Your Tree To Produce Plenty O' Fruit, You've Got To Cut It Back From Time To Time. Same Thing With Your Neural Cells. Some People Might Call It Brain Damage. I Call It Prunin'.

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.

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.

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.

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

For Most People, Self-awareness And Self-pity Blossom Simultaneously In Early Adolescence. It's About That Time That We Start Viewing The World As Something Other Than A Whoop-de-doo Playground, We Start To Experience Personally How Threatening It Can Be, How Cruel And Unjust. At The Very Moment When We Become, For The First Time, Both Introspective And Socially Conscientious, We Receive The Bad News That The World, By And Large, Doesn't Give A Rat's Ass.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

I'll Follow Him To The Ends Of The Earth,' She Sobbed. Yes, Darling. But The Earth Doesn't Have Any Ends. Columbus Fixed That.

One Has Not Only An Ability To Perceive The World But An Ability To Alter One's Perception Of It; More Simply, One Can Change Things By The Manner In Which One Looks At Them.

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.

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

Characteristics

The Full Moon - The Mandala Of The Sky.

Human Folly Does Not Impede The Turning Of The Stars.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

People Feel Tremendous Pressure To Settle Down In Some Sort Of Permanent Space And Fill It Up With Stuff, But Deep Inside They Resent Those Structures, And They're Scared To Death Of That Stuff Because They Know It Controls Them And Restricts Their Movements.

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.

What We Have Here Is An Unexpected Touchdown On The Runway Of The Heart.

Still Life With Woodpecker

In East Of Eden, John Steinbeck Wrote That There's Never Been A Great Creative Collaboration. When The Beatles First Burst On The Scene, I Thought They Were Proving Him Wrong. Later, We Learned That Lennon And Mccartney Had Each Composed Their Pop Masterpieces Separately, Individually. So It Goes.

Creative Collaboration

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

The Word Desire Suggests That There Is Something We Do Not Have. If We Have Everything Already, Then There Can Be No Desire, For There Is Nothing Left To Want. I Think That What The Buddha May Have Been Trying To Tell Us Is That We Have It All, Each Of Us, All The Time; Therefore, Desire Is Simply Unnecessary.

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.

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

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.

Bland Writing - Timid, Antiseptic, Vanilla Writing - Is Nearly As Unhealthy As The Brutal And Dark. Instead Of Sipping, Say, Elixir, Nectar, Tequila, Or Champagne, The Reader Is Invited To Slurp Lumpy Milk Or Choke On The Author's Dust Bunnies.

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.

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? It'd Go Like This: You'd Get The Boss On The Line And Say, "listen, I've Been Sick Ever Since I Started Working Here, But Today I'm Well And I Won't Be In Anymore." Call In Well.

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.

Usually, Autobiography Is Such An Indulgence Of The Ego.

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

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

A Mockingbird... Was Heard To Blend The Songs Of 32 Different Kinds Of Birds Into A 10 Minute Performance, A Virtuoso Display That Served No Practical Purpose, Falling, Therefore, Into The Realm Of Pure Art.

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.

The Beet Is The Most Intense Of Vegetables

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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)

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.

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.

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

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

Finding Yourself

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Certainly That Sputterless Little Candleflame Of The Mediocre Mind Known As 'common Sense' Has Never Produced Anything Worth Celebrating.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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