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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.

-Tom Robbins

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We Say We Are

Tom Robbins

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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.

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

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All Dreams Continue In The Beyond.

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.

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.

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Does Koala Bear Poop Smell Like Cough Drops?

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.

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Reality Is Contradictory. And It's Paradoxical.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Magic Things Are Fond Of Deceptions.

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

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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

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.

In The Haunted House Of Life, Art Is The Only Stair That Doesn't Creak.

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.

Unhappiness Is The Ultimate Form Of Self-indulgence.

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

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

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Don't Be Outraged, Be Outrageous.

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

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.

I Started Writing When I Was 5 Years Old. I Would Dictate Stories To My Mother, And She Would Copy Them In A Scrapbook. If She Changed Anything To Make It, In Her Opinion, Better, I Would Throw A Tantrum.

The Enemy Is The Tyranny Of The Dull Mind.

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.

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.

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.

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

Usually, Autobiography Is Such An Indulgence Of The Ego.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

When I Go To The Shore, I Take Along The Poems Of Pablo Neruda. I Suppose It's Because The Poems Are Simultaneously Lush And Ripe And Kind Of Lazy, Yet Throbbing With Life - Like Summer Itself.

To Some Extent, Seattle Remains A Frontier Metropolis, A Place Where People Can Experiment With Their Lives, And Change And Grow And Make Things Happen.

Life And Change

Make Things Happen

If 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.

Plato Did Claim That The Unexamined Life Was Not Worth Living. Oedipus Rex Was Not So Sure.

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

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.

Love Is Dope, Not Chicken Soup.

...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.

I Have Never Ever Googled Myself, In Fact I Think The Christian Right Prohibits Such Things.

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.

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

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.

There Are Apparently Few Limitations Either Of Time Or Space On Where The Psyche Might Journey And Only The Customs Inspector Employed By Our Own Inhibitions Restricts What It Might Bring Back When It Reenters The Home Country Of Everyday Consciousness.

A Spirit Cannot Soar With Only One Wing.

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

Cultural Institutions By And Large Share One Primary Objective: Herd Control. Even When Ostensibly Benign, Their Propensity For Manipulation, Compartmentalization, Standardization And Suppression Of Potentially Disruptive Behavior Or Ideas, Has Served To Freeze The Evolution Of Consciousness Practically In Its Tracks.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

At The Typewriter You Find Out Who You Are.

Purpose! Purposes Are For Animals With A Hell Of A Lot More Dignity Than The Human Race! Just Hop On That Strange Torpedo And Ride It To Wherever It's Going.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Sharks Are The Criminals Of The Sea. Dolphins Are The Outlaws.

Poetry, The Best Of It, Is Lunar And Is Concerned With The Essential Insanities. Journalism Is Solar (there Are Numerous Newspapers Named The Sun, None Called The Moon) And Is Devoted To The Inessential.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

The 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.

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.

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.

Of The Seven Dwarfs, The Only One Who Shaved Was Dopey. That Should Tell Us Something About The Wisdom Of Shaving.

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

Every Individual Has To Assume Responsibility For His Or Her Own Actions, Even The Poor And The Young. A Social System That Decrees Otherwise Is Inviting Intellectual Atrophy And Spiritual Stagnation.

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.

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?

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

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

The One Thing Emphasized In Any Creative Writing Course Is 'write What You Know,' And That Automatically Drives A Wooden Stake Through The Heart Of Imagination. If They Really Understood The Mysterious Process Of Creating Fiction, They Would Say, 'you Can Write About Anything You Can Imagine.'

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.

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'.

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.

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.

If The Novelist Isn't Surprised By Where His Book Ends Up, He Or She Probably Hasn't Written Anything Worth Remembering.

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

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.

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

It's Hard To Say Who's A Greater Threat To The World, An Ambitious Ceo With A Big Ad Budget Or A Crafty Cleric With An Obsolete Bible Verse.

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.

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.

What Bothers Most Critics Of My Work Is The Goofiness. One Reviewer Said I Need To Make Up My Mind If Want To Be Funny Or Serious. My Response Is That I Will Make Up My Mind When God Does, Because Life Is A Commingling Of The Sacred And The Profane, Good And Evil. To Try And Separate Them Is Fallacy.

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.

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.

Outlaws Are Can Openers In The Supermarket Of Life.

Still Life With Woodpecker

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

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

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

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.

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

When A Man Confines An Animal In A Cage, He Assumes Ownership Of That Animal. But An Animal Is An Individual; It Cannot Be Owned. When A Man Tries To Own An Individual, Whether That Individual Be Another Man, An Animal Or Even A Tree, He Suffers The Psychic Consequences Of An Unnatural Act.

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.

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.

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

Breathe Properly. Stay Curious. And Eat Your Beets.

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.

My Faith Is Whatever Makes Me Feel Good About Being Alive. If Your Religion Doesn't Make You Feel Good To Be Alive, What The Hell Is The Point Of It?

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

His Voice Wore No Pants.

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.

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

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.

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.

Human Folly Does Not Impede The Turning Of The Stars.

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

Falling In Love

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.

A Thing Is Good Because It Is Good, Not Because It Is Natural. A Thing Is Bad Because It Is Bad, Not Because Its Artificial. It Is Not A Damn Iota Better To Be Bitten By A Rattlesnake Than Shot By A Gun.

If Complexity Doesn't Beat You, Paradox Will.

People Are Never Perfect, But Love Can Be.

Still Life With Woodpecker

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

It Was Autumn, The Springtime Of Death.

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.

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.

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

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Orson Scott Card

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