Tom Robbins Quotes (157 Quotes)

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.

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

What looks to be a wisp of cloud is actually the moon, narrow and pale like a paring snipped from a snowman's toenail.

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.

The party in Alobar's head, which agitation and anxiety were throwing, now was crashed by a notion: existence can be rearranged.

It was autumn, the springtime of death. Rain spattered the rotting leaves, and a wild wind wailed. Death was singing in the shower. Death was happy to be alive. The fetus bailed out without a parachute. It landed in the sideline Astroturf, so upsetting the cheerleaders that for the remained of the afternoon their rahs were more like squeaks.

There is, however, a similarity between juggling and composing on the typewriter. The trick is, when you spill something, make it look like part of the act.

I have hitched and hiked over every state and half the nations, through blizzards and under rainbows, in deserts and cities, backward and side-ways, upstairs, downstairs and in my lady's chamber.

Sissy dear. Your thumbs. HOLLYWOOD SPECTACULAR. LAS VEGAS. THE ROSE BOWL. Larger than any one man's desire.

Whatever goes wrong can be used to your advantage, providing it goes wrong enough.

I may be mad, he thought, but I prefer the shit of this world to whatever sweet ambrosias the next may offer.

The unhappy person resents it when you try to cheer him up, because that means he has to stop dwelling on himself and start paying attention to the universe. Unhappiness is the ultimate form of self-indulgence. When you're unhappy, you get to pay a lot of attention to yourself. You get to take yourself oh so very seriously.

It was autumn, the springtime of death.

They glared at her the way any intelligent persons ought to glare when what they need is a smoke, a bite, a cup of coffee, a piece of ass, or a good fast-paced story, and all they're getting is philosophy.

I removed the freeway from its temporal context. Overpasses, cloverleafs, exit ramps took on the personality of Mayan ruins for me. Without destination, without cessation, my run was often silent and empty; there were no increments, no arbitrary graduations reducing time to functional units. I abstracted and purified.

Sometimes one gets the idea that life thinks it's still living in Paris in the thirties.

When I was younger, before this layoff which has nearly finished me, I hitchhiked one hundred and twenty-seven hours without stopping, without food or sleep, crossed the continent twice in six days, cooled my thumbs in both oceans and caught rides after midnight on unlighted highways, such was my skill, persuasion, rhythm. I set records and immediately cracked them; went farther, faster than any hitchhiker before or since.

I mean that gods do not limit men. Men limit men.

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.

It's not men who limit women, it's not straights who limit gays, it's not whites who limit blacks. What limits people is lack of character. What limits people is that they don't have the fucking nerve or imagination to star in their own movie, let alone direct it.

Tilli stroked her Chihuahua. MaxÆs heart made a sound like the sleigh bells on Mrs. Santa ClausÆs dildo.

If you could buckle your Bugs Bunny wristwatch to a ray of light, your watch would continue ticking but the hands wouldn't move. That's because at the speed of light there is no time. Time is relative to velocity. At high speeds, time is literally stretched. Since light is the ultimate in velocity, at light-speed time is stretched to its absolute and becomes static. Albert Einstein figured that one out.

South Richmond was a neighborhood of mouse holes, lace curtains, Sears catalogs, measles epidemics, baloney sandwiches- and men who knew more about the carburetor than they knew about the clitoris.

With me, something different and deep, in bright focus and pointing the way, arrived in the practice of hitchhiking. I am the spirit and the heart of hitchhiking, I am its cortex and its medulla, I am its foundation and its culmination, I am the jewel in its lotus.

Kudra was amused by Alobar's tentative polka until her eyes fell upon the tumescent protrusion dancing with him. Disgusting she thought. An erection is just inappropriate. Then she realized with a shock that she was so wet that children could have sailed toy boats in her underpants.

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.

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.

Western civilization was declining too fast for comfort, but too slowly to be very exciting.

If you want to change the world, change yourself.

The brown paper bag is the only thing civilized man has produced that does not seem out of place in nature.

You are an ignorant schoolgirl. You think civilization is a good thing.

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.

There are people in this world who can wear whale masks and people who cannot, and the wise know to which group they belong.

Nobody quite knew what to make of the moon any more.

What we have here is an unexpected touchdown on the runway of the heart.

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.

In school you learn that it is the thumb that separates human beings from the lower primates. The thumb is an evolutionary triumph. Because of his thumbs, man can use tools; because he can use tools he can extend his senses, control his environment and increase in sophistication and power. The thumb is the cornerstone of civilization!

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.

Your author has found love to be the full trip, emotionally speaking; the grand tour: fall in love, visit both Heaven and Hell for the price of one.

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.

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.

Outlaws, like lovers, poets, and tubercular composers who cough blood onto piano keys, do their finest work in the slippery rays of the moon.

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.

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 enemy is the tyranny of the dull mind.

A sense of humor, properly developed, is superior to any religion so far devised.

Magic things are fond of deceptions.

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.

People are never perfect, but love can be.

Anarchy is like custard cooking over a flame; it has to be constantly stirred or it sticks and gets heavy, like government.