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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.

-Tom Robbins

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When I Go To

Tom Robbins

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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.

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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.

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.

Eighty Percent Of Love Is Smell.

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.'

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

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.

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

Still Life With Woodpecker

Our Individuality Is All, All, That We Have. There Are Those Who Barter It For Security, Those Who Repress It For What They Believe Is The Betterment Of The Whole Society, But Blessed In The Twinkle Of The Morning Star Is The One Who Nurtures It And Rides It In, In Grace And Love And Wit, From Peculiar Station To Peculiar Station Along Life's Bittersweet Route.

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.

Red Hair Is Caused By Sugar And Lust.

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.

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."

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.

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.

Love Is Very Powerful, But It Has Limits And It's A Costly Mistake To Spread It Too Thin.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

I Believed In Looking At People As Individuals, Not In Groups. I Hated Groups; Still Do. And I Saw Particularly The University, The University Artists Really Acted As A Group. The Others Didn't So Much, But The University People Took Advantage Of That And Behaved Like A Group, Rather Than As Individuals. They Had A Lot Of Power That Way.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

What We, Thanks To Jung, Call "synchronicity" (coincidence On Steroids), Buddhists Have Long Known As "the Interpenetration Of Realities." Whether It's A Natural Law Of Sorts Or Simply Evidence Of Mathematical Inevitability (an Infinite Number Of Monkeys Locked Up With An Infinite Number Of Typewriters Eventually Producing 'hamlet,' Not To Mention 'tarzan Of The Apes'), It Seems To Be As Real As It Is Eerie.

A Spirit Cannot Soar With Only One Wing.

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

You're Better Equipped For This World Than I Am," She Said. "i'm Always Trying To Change The World. You Know How To Live In It.

Hawaii Made The Mouth Of Her Soul Water.

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.

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

Outlaws Are Can Openers In The Supermarket Of Life.

Still Life With Woodpecker

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

Why Procrastinate When You Can Precognitate?

Procrastinating

Philosophers Have Argued For Centuries About How Many Angels Can Dance On The Head Of A Pin, But Materialists Have Known All Along That It Depends On Whether They Are Jitterbugging Or Dancing Cheek To Cheek.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Cant You Understand That Romanticism Is No More An Enemy Of Science Than Mysticism Is? In Fact, Romanticism And Science Are Good For Each Other. The Scientist Keeps The Romantic Honest And The Romantic Keeps The Scientist Human.

Love Is The Ultimate Outlaw.

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.

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?

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.

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

It Was Autumn, The Springtime Of Death.

Unhappiness Is The Ultimate Form Of Self-indulgence.

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.

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.

Don't Be Outraged, Be Outrageous.

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.

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.

A Lot Of My Work Comes From What In Asia Is Called The 'mind Of Wonder.' There Is Not A Lot Of 'mind Of Wonder' Writing In Contemporary Western Literature. I Think That's What Appeals To The Readers Who Are My Fans.

If Little Else, The Brain Is An Educational Toy.

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

Reality Is Contradictory. And It's Paradoxical.

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

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.

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.

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

It Is What It Is

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

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.

Christianity... Is An Eastern Religion.

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

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

Like The Arthurian Years At Camelot, The Sixties Constituted A Breakthrough, A Fleeting Moment Of Glory, A Time When A Significant Little Chunk Of Humanity Briefly Realised Its Moral Potential And Flirted With Its Neurological Destiny, A Collective Spiritual Awakening That Flared Brilliantly Until The Barbaric And Mediocre Impulses Of The Species Drew Tight Once More The Curtains Of Darkness.

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.

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'.

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

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

Still Life With Woodpecker

Don't Confuse Symmetry With Balance.

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.

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

Still Life With Woodpecker

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

I Work With Pen And Paper. That's My Favorite Way To Write. I Love The Way The Ink Sinks Into The Wood, Soaks Into The Wood Pulp. There's Something About That Process That's So Organic.

The Enemy Of The Black Is Not The White. The Enemy Of Capitalist Is Not Communist, The Enemy Of Homosexual Is Not Heterosexual, The Enemy Of Jew Is Not Arab, The Enemy Of Youth Is Not The Old, The Enemy Of Hip Is Not Redneck, The Enemy Of Chicano Is Not Gringo And The Enemy Of Women Is Not Men. We All Have The Same Enemy. The Enemy Is The Tyranny Of The Dull Mind. The Enemy Is Every Expert Who Practices Technocratic Manipulation, The Enemy Is Every Proponent Of Standardization And The Enemy Is Every Victim Who Is So Dull And Lazy And Weak As To Allow Himself To Be Manipulated And Standardized.

If Desire Causes Suffering, It May Be Because We Do Not Desire Wisely, Or That We Are Inexpert At Obtaining What We Desire. Instead Of Hiding Our Heads In A Prayer Cloth And Building Walls Against Temptation, Why Not Get Better At Fulfilling Desire? Salvation Is For The Feeble, That's What I Think. I Don't Want Salvation, I Want Life, All Of Life, The Miserable As Well As The Superb.

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

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.

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

Our Greatest Human Adventure Is The Evolution Of Consciousness. We Are In This Life To Enlarge The Soul, Liberate The Spirit, And Light Up The Brain.

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.

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.

Toys Are Made In Heaven, Batteries Are Made In Hell.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

You Have To Eat Your Technique. Digest It. It's In Your Blood, But You're Not Concerned With It Anymore.

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.

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.

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

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.

Every Day Is Judgement Day. Always Has Been. Always Will Be.

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

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.

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

Still Life With Woodpecker

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

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

I Think Too Much Is Known About Me Already. I Think Biographical Information Can Get In The Way Of The Reading Experience. The Interchange Between The Reader And The Work. For Example, I Know Far Too Much About Norman Mailer And Kurt Vonnegut. Because I Know As Much As I Do About Their Personal Lives, I Can't Read Their Work Without This Interjecting Itself. So If I Had It To Do Over, I'd Probably Go The Way Of J.d. Salinger Or Thomas Pynchon. And Just Stay Out Of It Altogether And Let All The Focus Be On The Work Itself And Not On Me.

I Sweet Potato What I Sweet Potato.

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.

We're Making It Up. The World, The Universe, Life, Reality. Especially Reality.

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

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.

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

And Who Ever Said The World Was Fair, Little Lady? Maybe Death Is Fair, But Certainly Not Life. We Must Accept The Unfairness As Proof Of The Sublime Flux Of Existence, The Capricious Music Of The Universe- And Go On About Our Tasks

...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.

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.

Some Praise Me, Some Blame Me. I Go The Other Way. Sometimes Those Things That Attract The Most Attention To Us Are The Things Which Afford Us The Greatest Privacy

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.

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

All Dreams Continue In The Beyond.

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.

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.

I Do Not Know Why The Dead Do Not Come Back To Life. Perhaps Death Is So Wonderful, In Ways We Cannot Comprehend, That They Prefer It Over And Above Their Friends And Loved Ones, Although I Am Inclined To Doubt That Be The Case.

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?'

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

More Immediately, By Waxing Soulful You Will Have Granted Yourself The Possibility Of Ecstatic Participation In What The Ancients Considered A Divinely Animated Universe. And On A Day To Day Basis, Folks, It Doesn't Get Any Better Than That.

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

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

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.

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

The Only Authority I Respect Is The One That Causes Butterflies To Fly South In Fall And North In Springtime.

The Moon Invented Natural Rhythm. Civilization Uninvented It.

If Complexity Doesn't Beat You, Paradox Will.

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.

Reality Is Contradictory. And It's Paradoxical. If There's Any One Word -- If You Had To Pick One Word To Describe The Nature Of The Universe -- I Think That Word Would Be Paradox. That's True At The Subatomic Level, Right Through Sociological, Psychological, Philosophical Levels On Up To Cosmic Levels.

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.

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

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

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

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

Dreams Don't Come True. Dreams Are True.

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.

Live The Beauty Or Your Own Reality.

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

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.

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.

Self-esteem Is For Sissies. Accept That You're A Pimple And Try To Keep A Lively Sense Of Humor About It. That Way Lies Grace - And Maybe Even Glory.

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

Except In The Areas Of Civil Rights And Medical Marijuana, The Legacy Of The Sixties Counterculture Has Been Largely Superficial. Still, Though The Light Has Dimmed And Gone Underground, Something In Me Would Like To Think The Sixties Phenomenon Was A Dress Rehearsal For A Grander, Wider Leap In Consciousness Yet To Come.

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.

Leave It To A Naive World-saver Like You To View Our Love As A Sacred Cause When In Actual Fact All It Was Was Some Barking At The Moon.

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.

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

Cries For Help Are Frequently Inaudible.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Laws, It Is Said, Are For The Protection Of The People. It's Unfortunate That There Are No Statistics On The Number Of Lives That Are Clobbered Yearly As A Result Of Laws: Outmoded Laws; Laws That Found Their Way Onto The Books As A Result Of Ignorance, Hysteria Or Political Haymaking; Antilife Laws; Biased Laws; Laws That Pretend That Reality Is Fixed And Nature Is Definable; Laws That Deny People The Right To Refuse Protection. A Survey Such As That Could Keep A Dozen Dull Sociologists Out Of Mischief For Months.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

The Sky Was The Color Of Edgar Allan Poe's Pajamas.

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 Trick Is This: Keep Your Eye On The Ball. Even When You Can't See The Ball.

This Is The Room Of The Wolfmother Wallpaper.

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.

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.

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

Still Life With Woodpecker

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

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

Employing Women As My Primary Protagonists Has Allowed Me To Step Outside Of Myself, To Distance Myself From My Own Personality, Far More Easily Than Were I To Look At Events From A Masculine Perspective.

What An Electric Heater Perched Upon The Rim Of The Bathtub Of The World That Dead Jesus Was.

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.

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

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.

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