Tom Robbins Quotes

On this page you can find the TOP of Tom Robbins's best quotes! We hope you will find some sayings from Author Tom Robbins's in our collection, which will inspire you to new achievements! There are currently 519 quotes on this page collected since July 22, 1936! Share our collection of quotes with your friends on social media so that they can find something to inspire them!
  • Ellen Cherry was from the south and had good manners. She didn´t have any panties on, but she had good manners.

    Tom Robbins (2003). “Skinny Legs and All”, p.102, Bantam
  • Three of the four elements are shared by all creatures, but fire was a gift to humans alone. Smoking cigarettes is as intimate as we can become with fire without immediate excruciation. Every smoker is an embodiment of Prometheus, stealing fire from the gods and bringing it on back home. We smoke to capture the power of the sun, to pacify Hell, to identify with the primordial spark, to feed on the marrow of the volcano. It’s not the tobacco we’re after but the fire. When we smoke, we are performing a version of the fire dance, a ritual as ancient as lightning.

    "Still Life with Woodpecker". Book by Tom Robbins, 1980.
  • His voice wore no pants.

    Tom Robbins (2003). “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues”, p.230, Bantam
  • 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.

    "Jitterbug Perfume". Book by Tom Robbins, 2003.
  • 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.

    Tom Robbins (2003). “Still Life with Woodpecker”, p.93, Bantam
  • 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.

    Tom Robbins (2003). “Another Roadside Attraction”, p.127, Bantam
  • There's birth, there's death, and in between there's maintenance.

    "Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates". Book by Tom Robbins, 2001.
  • 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.

  • Life is like a stew, you have to stir it frequently, or all the scum rises to the top.

    Tom Robbins (2003). “Still Life with Woodpecker”, p.92, Bantam
  • 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.

    Tom Robbins (2003). “Still Life with Woodpecker”, p.10, Bantam
  • Teachers who offer you the ultimate answers do not possess the ultimate answers, for if they did, they would know that the ultimate answers cannot be given, they can only be received.

    Tom Robbins (2003). “Jitterbug Perfume”, p.422, Bantam
  • The party in Alobar’s head, which agitation and anxiety were throwing, now was crashed by a notion: existence can be rearranged.

    Tom Robbins (2003). “Jitterbug Perfume”, p.49, Bantam
  • 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.

  • White folks have controlled New Orleans with money and guns, black folks have controlled it with magic and music, and although there has been a steady undercurrent of mutual admiration, an intermingling of cultures unheard of in any other American city, South or North; although there has prevailed a most joyous and fascinating interface, black anger and white fear has persisted, providing the ongoing, ostensibly integrated fete champetre with volatile and sometimes violent idiosyncrasies.

    Tom Robbins (2003). “Jitterbug Perfume”, p.360, Bantam
  • Are you aware that rushing toward a goal is a sublimated death wish? It's no coincidence we call them 'deadlines.'

    "Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas". Book by Tom Robbins, 1994.
  • 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.

    Tom Robbins (2003). “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues”, p.215, Bantam
  • 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.

    Clouds   Dust   Perfect  
    Tom Robbins (2003). “Jitterbug Perfume”, p.227, Bantam
  • 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.

  • Society in general maintains such a vested interested in its cozy habits and solidified belief systems that it had rather die - or kill - than entertain change. Consider how threatened religious fundamentalists of all faiths remain to this day by science in general and Darwin in particular.

    "The Syntax of Sorcery". Interview with Tony Vigorito, realitysandwich.com. June 6, 2012.
  • The full moon - the mandala of the sky.

  • I think science has begun to demonstrate that aging is a disease. If it is, it can be cured.

  • I could say I believe in every drop of rain that . . . Well, I believe life is a Zen koan, that is, an unsolvable riddle. But the contemplation of that riddle--even though it cannot be solved--is, in itself, transformative. And if the contemplation is of high enough quality, you can merge with the divine.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • The beauty of simplicity is the complexity it attracts.

    Tom Robbins (2003). “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues”, p.238, Bantam
  • 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.

  • 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 Syntax of Sorcery: An Interview with Tom Robbins". Interview with Tony Vigorito, realitysandwich.com. June 6, 2012.
  • The highest function of love is that it makes the loved one a unique and irreplacable being.

    Tom Robbins (2003). “Jitterbug Perfume”, p.161, Bantam
  • In fiction, when you paint yourself into a corner, you can write a pair of suction cups onto the bottoms of your shoes and walk up the wall and out the skylight and see the sun breaking through the clouds. In nonfiction, you don't have that luxury.

    Clouds  
  • The oyster was an animal worthy of New Orleans, as mysterious and private and beautiful as the city itself. If one could accept that oysters build their houses out of their lives, one could imagine the same of New Orleans, whose houses were similarly and resolutely shuttered against an outside world that could never be trusted to show proper sensitivity toward the oozing delicacies within.

Page 1 of 18
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • 6
  • 7
  • ...
  • 17
  • 18
  • We hope you have found the saying you were looking for in our collection! At the moment, we have collected 519 quotes from the Author Tom Robbins, starting from July 22, 1936! We periodically replenish our collection so that visitors of our website can always find inspirational quotes by authors from all over the world! Come back to us again!