Top 500 Tom Robbins Quotes (2026 Update)
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451. “Outlaws are not members of society. However, they may be important to society.”

— Tom Robbins

452. “Liberty, the very opposite of ownership and control, cannot, then, result from political action, either at the polls or the barricades, but rather evolves out of attitude. If it results from anything, it may be levity.”

— Tom Robbins

453. “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?’”

— Tom Robbins

454. “She lunched on papaya poo poo or mango mu mu or some other fruity foo foo bursting with overripe tropical vowels.”

— Tom Robbins

455. “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.”

— Tom Robbins

456. “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.”

— Tom Robbins

457. “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.”

— Tom Robbins

458. “The inability to correctly perceive reality is often responsible for humans’ insane behavior. And every time they substitute an all-purpose, sloppy slang word for words that would accurately describe an emotion or a situation, it lowers their reality orientations, pushes them farther from shore, out onto the foggy waters of alienation and confusion.”

— Tom Robbins

459. “When had it begun, my fantasy of the golden letter? It was probably in my late teens or early twenties that I first became inexplicably possessed of the notion that one day the mailman would deliver a letter to my door that would dramatically alter my life. For the better, I should add: this conviction was in no way a premonition of misfortune or sorrow. In fact, in my daydream the letter was surrounded by a kind of golden aura.”

— Tom Robbins

460. “There were no mail-order catalogues in 1492. Marco Polo’s journal was the wish book of Renaissance Europe. Then, Columbus sailed the ocean blue and landed in Sears’ basement. Despite all the Indians on the escalator, Columbus’ visit came to be known as a “discovery.”

— Tom Robbins

461. “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.”

— Tom Robbins

462. “I began to hitchhike in something akin to geological time: slow, ancient, vast.”

— Tom Robbins

463. “If God didn’t prefer for us to drink at night, he wouldn’t have made neon!”

— Tom Robbins

464. “And the message, no matter how entertainingly couched, is invariably the same: to be special, you must conform; to be happy, you must consume.”

— Tom Robbins

465. “Breath Properly, Stay Curious, and Always Eat Your Beets!”

— Tom Robbins

466. “Humans are the most advanced of mammals – although a case could be made for the dolphins – because they seldom grow up. Behavioral traits such as curiosity about the world, flexibility of response, and playfulness are common to practically all young mammals but are usually rapidly lost with the onset of maturity in all but humans. Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature. One.”

— Tom Robbins

467. “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.”

— Tom Robbins

468. “Reality is contradictory. And it’s paradoxical.”

— Tom Robbins

469. “In order to tame death, they refuse to completely enjoy life. In rejecting complete enjoyment, they are half-dead in advance – and that with no guarantee that their sacrifice will actually benefit them when all is done.”

— Tom Robbins

470. “The uncle ignored Gracie’s father. ‘In any event,’ he went on, ’when brewers combine hops with yeast and grain and water, and allow the mixture to ferment – to rot – it magically produces an elixir so gassy with blue-collar cheer, so regal with glints of gold, so titillating with potential mischief, so triumphantly refreshing, that it seizes the soul and thrusts it toward that ethereal plateau where, to paraphrase Baudelaire, all human whimsies float and merge.”

— Tom Robbins

471. “Elsewhere, they might call the wind Mariah, but here its name was Something Fishy.”

— Tom Robbins

472. “Existence can be rearranged. A man can be many things. I am special and free. And the world is round round round.”

— Tom Robbins

473. “We entertain the immortals in order that they might be persuaded to help us recover the strength and unity stolen from us by death.”

— Tom Robbins

474. “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.”

— Tom Robbins

Featured in: Book Quotes

475. “Now, in the eyes of the stars, men may be no more exalted than beasts, and kingly men no worthier than the wretched.”

— Tom Robbins

476. “Sometimes one gets the idea that life thinks it’s still living in Paris in the thirties.”

— Tom Robbins

477. “It might be noted here that Freudian analysts of fairy tales have suggested that kissing toads and frogs is symbolized fellatio. In that regard, Princess Leigh-Cheri was, on a conscious level, innocent, although not so naive as Queen Tilli, who thought fellatio was an obscure Italian opera and was annoyed that she couldn’t find the score.”

— Tom Robbins

478. “I mean that gods do not limit men. Men limit men.”

— Tom Robbins

479. “But man by his nature is an unnatural animal. If any creature stands a chance of defeating death, it is man.”

— Tom Robbins

480. “They warn us when we’re kids that we’re going to have to suffer, but they neglect to mention the indignity. What self-respecting fetus, if shown its future as a proctology patient, boot-camp recruit, or game show contestant, would still elect to be born?”

— Tom Robbins

481. “When civilized people dance they reconnect with their old animal nature. It reminds them that they aren’t mechanical chess pieces or rooted trees, but free-flowing meat waves of possibility.”

— Tom Robbins

482. “The kingdom of formal ideas will always be a weak neighbor to the kingdom of thrills.”

— Tom Robbins

483. “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.”

— Tom Robbins

484. “His voice wore no pants.”

— Tom Robbins

485. “She needed help, but God was in a meeting whenever she rang.”

— Tom Robbins

486. “Little devils wrestled with little angels in the innermost chambers of my conscience. The devils cheated, of course, although where my conscience was concerned they were also more familiar with the terrain.”

— Tom Robbins

487. “Feeling loquacious now, Switters might have gone on to offer his theory on suicide bombers, to wit: Islamic terrorist groups were successful in attracting volunteer martyrs because the young men got to strap explosives on themselves and blast valuable public property to smithereens. Exhilarating boom-boom power. If they were required to martyr themselves by being dragged behind a bus or sticking a wet finger in a light socket, volunteers would be few and far between.”

— Tom Robbins

488. “We each took a fierce delight in introducing the other to some new idea or development, the next amazing artist or record album, always hustling to out-avant the other’s garde.”

— Tom Robbins

489. “Isn’t fixity the hallmark of the living dead?”

— Tom Robbins

490. “To the domesticated, nomads were an unwelcome reminder of instinct suppressed, liberty compromised, and control unimplemented.”

— Tom Robbins

491. “My paintings are very strange – large and empty, like walls. Just the opposite of my writing, which is rich and juicy.”

— Tom Robbins

492. “What if the Christ and the Messiah come, and they’re two different guys?”

— Tom Robbins

493. “I married John Paul because I’m knocked out by his style. Because I love him and respect him and enjoy the transformations that take place as a result of our sharing the same dimensions.”

— Tom Robbins

494. “Some folks hide, and some folks seek, and seeking, when it’s mindless, neurotic, desperate, or pusillanimous can be a form of hiding. But there are folks who want to know and aren’t afraid to look and won’t turn tail should they find it – and if they never do, they’ll have a good time anyway because nothing, neither the terrible truth nor the absence of it, is going to cheat them out of one honest breath of earth’s sweet gas.”

— Tom Robbins

495. “There are stories still in existence that I wrote when I was five. However, I did not get published until I was seven.”

— Tom Robbins

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

496. “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.”

— Tom Robbins

497. “A child’s mind is its living room; it’s is going to be residing there for the rest of its earthly existence.”

— Tom Robbins

498. “Well, history isn’t ever going to end, happily or unhappily. And history is ending every second – happily for some of us, unhappily for others, happily one second, unhappily the next. History is always ending and always not ending, and both ways there is nothing to wait for.”

— Tom Robbins

499. “Oh, no, darlin’, none o’ that. Sure and they destroyed some cells, no doubt about it, but ‘twas for the good. 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’.”

— Tom Robbins

500. “And did I lose my faith in raffles about the same time and for approximately the same reasons that I quit believing that virgins can have babies; or that if I slay only those people the government encourages me to slay, I’ll be allowed to spend all of eternity in some vaguely located puffyland sipping milk and honey with a huzzahing throng of cheery nonthinkers?”

— Tom Robbins