Top 500 Tom Robbins Quotes (2024 Update)
Page 10 of 10

451. “A sausage is an image of rest, peace and tranquility in stark contrast to the destruction and chaos of everyday life.”

— Tom Robbins

452. “The trip left the girl gaga, goofy, tainted, transformed, her nose a busted hymen through which sperm of a thousand colors swam a hootchy-kootchy stroke into her cerebral lagoon.”

— Tom Robbins

453. “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

454. “Personally, I’ve found maturity an overrated quality except in wine, for both creative artists and lively people in general have much to gain from facing the world with the unsullied vision, flexible responses, and playful sensibilities of a child.”

— Tom Robbins

455. “A book no more contains reality than a clock contains time.”

— Tom Robbins

456. “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

457. “There are those who have condemned Leary as a liar, a sellout, an opportunist, and most of all, a raging egomaniac; but the truth is, he was simply Irish.”

— Tom Robbins

458. “In a voice that sounds the way a can of cheap dog food would sound if a can of cheap dog food could speak, he tells you you are looking well.”

— Tom Robbins

459. “Can’t they comprehend that not ever’thing’s done for a paycheck? That sometimes you just make a thing ’cause you wanna see how it’ll turn out, ’cause you have a feeling in your gut that it oughta be made?”

— Tom Robbins

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

— Tom Robbins

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

— Tom Robbins

462. “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

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

— Tom Robbins

464. “Time brought along its secretary, memory, and space brought its brat, loneliness.”

— Tom Robbins

465. “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

466. “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

467. “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

468. “Some folks hide, and some folks seek, and seeking, when it’s mindless, neurotic, desperate, or pusillanimous can be a form of hiding.”

— Tom Robbins

469. “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

470. “Alcoholism is an imperfect spiritual longing.”

— Tom Robbins

471. “Outlaws are not members of society. However, they may be important to society.”

— Tom Robbins

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

— Tom Robbins

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

— Tom Robbins

474. “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

475. “The lesson was the same: This program is subject to change – often unexpectedly, sometimes in the batting of an eye. It’s the best argument I know against suicide.”

— Tom Robbins

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

— Tom Robbins

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

— Tom Robbins

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

— Tom Robbins

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

— Tom Robbins

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

— Tom Robbins

481. “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

482. “I like to drink just enough to change the temperature in the brain room. I’ll turn to less mainstream substances if I want to rearrange the furniture.”

— Tom Robbins

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

— Tom Robbins

484. “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

485. “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

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

— Tom Robbins

487. “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

488. “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

489. “If I have been given any gift in this life, it’s my ability to live simultaneously in the rational world and the world of imagination.”

— Tom Robbins

490. “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

491. “The accumulation of material things is shallow and vain, but to have a genuine relationship with such things is to have a relationship with life and, by extension, a relationship with the divine.”

— Tom Robbins

492. “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

493. “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

494. “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

495. “Writing a novel is not so much a project as a journey, a voyage, an adventure.”

— Tom Robbins

496. “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

497. “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

498. “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

499. “His voice wore no pants.”

— Tom Robbins

500. “Twenty candles on a cake. Twenty Camels in a package. Twenty centuries under our belts and where do we go from here?”

— Tom Robbins