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Tom Robbins Quotes
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Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins is an American novelist. His best-selling novels are "seriocomedies" , often wildly poetic stories with a strong social and philosophical undercurrent, an irreverent bent, and scenes extrapolated from carefully researched bizarre facts. His novel Even Cowgirls Get the Blues was made into a movie in 1993 by Gus Van Sant and stars Uma Thurman, Lorraine Bracco, and Keanu Reeves.



✵ 22. July 1932  •  Other names تام رابینز, 湯姆·羅賓斯, トム・ロビンズ
Tom Robbins photo
Tom Robbins: 250 quotes15 likes

Tom Robbins Quotes

“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.”

Tom Robbins Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates

Source: Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates

“Those people who recognise that imagination is reality's master, we call sages, and those who act upon it, we call artists.”

Tom Robbins Skinny Legs and All

Skinny Legs and All (1990)
Context: ... she recreated the mountains not as she had originally seen them but as she eventually chose to perceive them, not only a capacity to observe the world but a capacity to alter his or her observation of it — which, in the end, is the capacity to alter the world, itself. Those people who recognise that imagination is reality's master, we call "sages," and those who act upon it, we call "artists."

“Of the Seven Dwarfs, the only one who shaved was Dopey. That should tell us something about the wisdom of shaving.”

Tom Robbins Skinny Legs and All

Source: Skinny Legs and All

“Cries for help are frequently inaudible.”

Tom Robbins Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

Source: Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

“Some marriages are made in heaven,
Mine was made in Hong Kong, by the same people who make those little rubber pork chops they sell in the pet department at Kmart.”

Tom Robbins

“Minds were made for blowing.”

Tom Robbins Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas

Source: Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas

“Unhappiness is the ultimate form of self-indulgence.”

Tom Robbins

“Reality whistles a different tune underwater.”

Tom Robbins Skinny Legs and All

Source: Skinny Legs and All

“Be your own flying saucer! Rescue yourself!”

Tom Robbins Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

Source: Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

“When they tell you to grow up, they mean stop growing.”

Tom Robbins

“The price of self-destiny is never cheap, and in certain situations it is unthinkable. But to achieve the marvelous, it is precisely the unthinkable that must be thought.”

Tom Robbins book Jitterbug Perfume

Source: Jitterbug Perfume

“Are you aware that rushing toward a goal is a sublimated death wish? It's no coincidence we call them 'deadlines.”

Tom Robbins Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas

Source: Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas (1994)

“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.”

Tom Robbins book Jitterbug Perfume

Source: Jitterbug Perfume

“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.”

Tom Robbins book Jitterbug Perfume

Source: Jitterbug Perfume

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

Tom Robbins book Jitterbug Perfume

Source: Jitterbug Perfume

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

Tom Robbins Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

Source: Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

“Brilliantly, ecstatically, irrepressibly. This is the way to burn”

Tom Robbins book Still Life with Woodpecker

Source: Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)
Context: "This is the way to burn," the fuse seemed to be saying to the more docile, slow-witted candlewick. "Brilliantly, ecstatically, irrepressibly. This is the way to burn."

“Birth and death were easy. It was life that was hard.”

Tom Robbins book Jitterbug Perfume

Source: Jitterbug Perfume (1984)

“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.”

Tom Robbins Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates

Source: Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates

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

Tom Robbins book Still Life with Woodpecker

Source: Still Life with Woodpecker

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

Tom Robbins book Jitterbug Perfume

Source: Jitterbug Perfume

“Whether a man is a criminal or a public servant is purely a matter of perspective.”

Tom Robbins book Another Roadside Attraction

Source: Another Roadside Attraction (1971)

“Would you complain because a beautiful sunset doesn't have a future or a shooting star a payoff? And why should romance 'lead anywhere'? Passion isn't a path through the woods. Passionthe woods.”

Tom Robbins Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas

Source: Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas

“He who jokes in the executioners face can be destroyed, but never defeated.”

Tom Robbins book Wild Ducks Flying Backward

Source: Wild Ducks Flying Backward

“His voice wore no pants.”

Tom Robbins

“Summer had come to sit on New York's face.”

Tom Robbins Skinny Legs and All

Source: Skinny Legs and All

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

Tom Robbins book Still Life with Woodpecker

Source: Still Life with Woodpecker

“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”

Tom Robbins Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

Source: Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

“The loony legacy of money was that the arithmetic by which things were measured had become more valuable than the things themselves.”

Tom Robbins Skinny Legs and All

Source: Skinny Legs and All

“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.”

Tom Robbins book Still Life with Woodpecker

Source: Still Life with Woodpecker

“Poetry, the best of it, is lunar and is concerned with the essential insanities. Journalism is solar (there are numerous newspapers named The Sun, none called The Moon) and is devoted to the inessential.”

Tom Robbins book Still Life with Woodpecker

Source: Still Life with Woodpecker

“It is more important to be free than to be happy.”

Tom Robbins

“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

“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”

Tom Robbins Skinny Legs and All

Source: Skinny Legs and All

“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.”

Tom Robbins book Still Life with Woodpecker

Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)

“They'd be no threat to me. I have a black belt in Haiku. And a black vest in the cleaners.”

Tom Robbins book Still Life with Woodpecker

Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)

“I’m acquainted with a, uh, gentleman who claims that the extent to which a society focuses on the needs of its lowest common denominator is the extent to which that society’ll be mired in mediocrity. Whereas, if we would aim the bulk of our support at the brightest, most talented, most virtuous instead, then they would have the wherewithal to solve a lot of our problems, to uplift the whole culture, enlighten it or something, so that eventually there wouldn’t be so many losers and weaklings impeding evolution and dragging the whole species down. He claims that martyrs like you just perpetuate human misery by catering to it. He believes individuals have to take responsibility for their own lives and accept the consequences of their choices.”

Tom Robbins Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas

Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas (1994)

“The Middle Ages hangs over history's belt like a beer belly. It is too late now for aerobic dancing or cottage cheese lunches to reduce the Middle Ages. History will have to wear size 48 shorts forever.”

Tom Robbins book Jitterbug Perfume

Jitterbug Perfume (1984)

“The Devil doesn't make us do anything. The Devil, for example, doesn't make us mean. Rather, when we're mean, we make the Devil. Literally. Our actions create him. Conversely, when we behave with compassion, generosity, and grace, we create God in the world.”

Tom Robbins Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates

Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates (2000)

“There's no such thing as security in this life, sweetheart; and the sooner you accept that fact, the better off you'll be. The person who strives for security will never be free. The person who believes that she's found security will never reach paradise. What she mistakes for security is purgatory. You know what purgatory is, Gwendolyn? It's the waiting room, it's the lobby. Not only does she have the wrong libretto, she's stuck in the lobby where she can't see the show.”

Tom Robbins Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas

Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas (1994)