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There Is Little Difference Between The Zulu Warrior Who Smeared Bis Body With Lion's Fat And The Modern Woman Who Dabs Hers With Expensive Perfume. The One Was Trying To Acquire The Courage Of The King Of Beasts, The Other Is Attempting To Acquire The Irresistible Sexuality Of Flowers. The Underlying Principle Is The Same.

-Tom Robbins

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There Is Little Difference

Tom Robbins

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There Is Little Difference Between The Zulu Warrior Who Smeared Bis Body With Lion's Fat And The Modern Woman Who Dabs Hers With Expensive Perfume. The One Was Trying To Acquire The Courage Of The King Of Beasts, The Other Is Attempting To Acquire The Irresistible Sexuality Of Flowers. The Underlying Principle Is The Same.

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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.

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.

It Is Better To Be Small, Colorful, Sexy, Careless, And Peaceful, Like The Flowers, Than Large, Conservative, Repressed, Fearful, And Aggressive, Like The Thunder Lizards; A Lesson, By The Way, That The Earth Has Yet To Learn.

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

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.

What Are The Odds That Two Separate Writers, Strangers, A Thousand Miles Apart, Would Each Invent Fictions In Which Guys Take Girls To An Esoteric Frog Lecture On Their First Date? If That Isn't Synchronicity, It's Something Equally As Weird.

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

Hawaii Made The Mouth Of Her Soul Water.

People Of Ze Wurl, Relax!

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.

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

Reality Is Contradictory. And It's Paradoxical.

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.

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

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

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

Still Life With Woodpecker

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.

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

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

Collective Unconscious

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.

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.

You May Tell The Greatest Lies And Wear A Brilliant Disguise, But You Can't Escape The Eyes Of The One Who Sees Right Through You.

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.

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

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

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.

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

The Harsh Truth Is, Most Red-haired Men Look Like Blondes Who've Spoiled From Lack Of Refrigeration. They Look Like Brown-haired Men Who've Been Composted Out Behind The Barn. Yet That Same Pigmentation That On A Man Can Resemble Leaf Mold Or Junkyard Rust, A Woman Wears Like A Tiara Of Rubies.

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?'

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

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.

Time Passed. Art Came Off The Walls And Became Rituals. Ritual Became Religion. Religion Spawned Science. Science Led To Big Business. And Big Business, If It Continues On Its Present, Mindless Trajectory, Could Land Those Lucky Enough To Survive Its Ultimate Legacy Back Into Caves Again.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Christianity Is Merely A System For Turning Priestesses Into Handmaidens, Queens Into Concubines, And Goddesses Into Muses.

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.

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

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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.'

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

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.

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

What Is Politics, After All, But The Compulsion To Preside Over Property And Make Other Peoples' Decisions For Them?

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

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.

Does Koala Bear Poop Smell Like Cough Drops?

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

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

Political Activism Is Seductive Because It Seems To Offer The Possibility That One Can Improve Society, Make Things Better, Without Going Through The Personal Ordeal Of Rearranging One's Perceptions And Transforming One's Self.

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

Live The Beauty Or Your Own Reality.

Don't Confuse Symmetry With Balance.

Three Of The Four Elements Are Shared By All Creatures, But Fire Was A Gift To Humans Alone. Smoking Cigarettes Is As Intimate As We Can Become With Fire Without Immediate Excruciation. Every Smoker Is An Embodiment Of Prometheus, Stealing Fire From The Gods And Bringing It On Back Home. We Smoke To Capture The Power Of The Sun, To Pacify Hell, To Identify With The Primordial Spark, To Feed On The Marrow Of The Volcano. It’s Not The Tobacco We’re After But The Fire. When We Smoke, We Are Performing A Version Of The Fire Dance, A Ritual As Ancient As Lightning.

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.

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

Love Is Dope, Not Chicken Soup.

It Was Autumn, The Springtime Of Death.

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

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.

This Is The Room Of The Wolfmother Wallpaper.

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

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

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?.

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

Characteristics

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

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

Those Who Shun The Whimsy Of Things Will Experience Rigor Mortis Before Death.

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.

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

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

It Is What It Is

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.

Dreamily The Princess Stood Up. "i'm Not Sure If I Can Walk," She Said. "then I'll Carry You." "is That What Love Is?" "i No Longer Know What Love Is. A Week Ago I Had A Lot Of Ideas. What Love Is And How To Make It Stay. Now That I'm In Love, I Haven't A Clue. Now That I'm In Love, I'm Completely Stupid On The Subject.

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

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.

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.

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

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

The Beet Is The Most Intense Of Vegetables

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.

The Middle Ages Hangs Over History's Belt Like A Beer Belly. It Is Too Late Now For Aerobic Dancing Or Cottage Cheese Lunches To Reduce The Middle Ages. History Will Have To Wear Size 48 Shorts Forever.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Modern Romans Insisted That There Was Only One God, A Notion That Struck Alobar As Comically Simplistic. Worse, This Semitic Deity Was Reputed To Be Jealous (what Was There To Be Jealous Of If There Were No Other Gods?), Vindictive, And Altogether Foul-tempered. If You Didn't Serve The Nasty Fellow, The Romans Would Burn Your House Down. If You Did Serve Him, You Were Called A Christian And Got To Burn Other People's Houses Down.

Unfortunately, Little Darlings, There Is No Such Thing As A Simple Love Story.the Most Transitory Puppy Crush Is Complex To The Extent Of Lying Beyond The Far Reaches Of The Brain's Understanding.

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 Full Moon - The Mandala Of The Sky.

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

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.

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.

Perhaps The Most Terrible (or Wonderful) Thing That Can Happen To An Imaginative Youth, Aside From The Curse (or Blessing) Of Imagination Itself, Is To Be Exposed Without Preparation To The Life Outside His Or Her Own Sphere - The Sudden Revelation That There Is A There Out There.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

I Went To A Large Consolidated School In Appalachia. And I Wrote The Story When I Was In The Second Grade And I Took It Up To The Third Floor To The School Newspaper Office That Was Written And Edited By Juniors And Seniors.

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

His Voice Wore No Pants.

My Comic Sense, Although Deliberately Americanized, Is, In Its Intent, Much Closer Related To The Crazy Wisdom Of Zen Monks And The Goofy Genius Of Taoist Masters Than It Is To, Say, The Satirical Gibes On Saturday Night Live. It Has Both A Literary And A Metaphysical Function.

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

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

Rules Such As "write What You Know," And "show, Don't Tell," While Doubtlessly Grounded In Good Sense, Can Be Ignored With Impunity By Any Novelist Nimble Enough To Get Away With It. There Is, In Fact, Only One Rule In Writing Fiction: Whatever Works, Works.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

I Don't Want To Give The Impression That I Hold Daily Conversations With My Household Appliances, Although My Toaster Is As Old As Drew Barrymore And Almost As Talented.

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.

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.

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.

If Complexity Doesn't Beat You, Paradox Will.

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.

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

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

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

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

As A Child, I Was An Imaginary Playmate.

Being Able To Create Your Own Work, Being Able To Indulge Your Own Fantasies Is So Much Better Than Journalism, So Much More Fulfilling Than Journalism, To Me, That As Long As I Can Continue To Write Fiction, I Shall.

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

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

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.

Christianity... Is An Eastern Religion.

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

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.

If Little Else, The Brain Is An Educational Toy.

…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; ….

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.

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.

Life's An Offensive Proposition From Beginning To End. Maybe Those Who Can't Tolerate Offense Ought To Just Go Ahead And End It All, And Maybe Those Who Demand Financial Compensation For Offense Ought To Have It Ended For Them.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

The Ultimate End Of Any Ideology Is Totalitarianism.

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.

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

Oh God, Are There So Many Of Them In Our Land! Students Who Can’t Be Happy Until They’ve Graduated, Servicemen Who Can’t Be Happy Until They Are Discharged, Single Folks Who Can’t Be Happy Until They’ve Found A Mate, Workers Who Can’t Be Happy Until They’ve Retired, Adolescents Who Aren’t Happy Until They’re Grown, Ill People Who Aren’t Happy Until They’re Well, Failures Who Aren’t Happy Until They Succeed, Restless Who Can’t Wait Until They Get Out Of Town, And In Most Cases, Vice Versa, People Waiting, Waiting For The World To Begin.

Love Is The Ultimate Outlaw.

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

Normality Is The Great Neurosis Of Civilization.

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

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

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

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

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.

Outlaws Are Can Openers In The Supermarket Of Life.

Still Life With Woodpecker

Some Marriages Are Made In Heaven, Mine Was Made In Hong Kong, By The Same People Who Make Those Little Rubber Pork Chops They Sell In The Pet Department At Kmart.

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

The Enemy Is The Tyranny Of The Dull Mind.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Dreams Don't Come True. Dreams Are True.

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.

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.

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

Don't Talk About It - You'll Talk It Away. Let The Ideas Flow From Your Mind To The Page Without Exposing Them To Air. Especially Hot Air.

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.

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

Life Is Too Small A Container For Certain Individuals. Some Of Them, Such As Alobar, Huff And Puff And Try To Expand The Container. Others, Such As Kudra, Seek To Pry The Lid Off And Hop Out.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Human Folly Does Not Impede The Turning Of The Stars.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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?

Peeple Of Zee Wurl, Relax

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

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