“The first time that she spread her legs for him it had been like opening her jaws for the dentist.”
Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)
Quotes from book
Still Life with Woodpecker
Still Life With Woodpecker is the third novel by Tom Robbins, concerning the love affair between an environmentalist princess and an outlaw. The novel encompasses a broad range of topics, from aliens and redheads to consumerism, the building of bombs, romance, royalty, the Moon, and a pack of Camel cigarettes. The novel continuously addresses the question of "how to make love stay" and is sometimes referred to as "a post-modern fairy tale".
“Any half-awake materialist well knows — that which you hold holds you.”
Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)
Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)
Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)
Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)
Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)
Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)
“A better world has gotta start somewhere. Why not with you and me?”
Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)
Bernard to Leigh-Cheri, in Phase III, Ch. 46
Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)
Context: Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won’t adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honor and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet. That would mean that security is out of the question. The words “make” and “stay” become inappropriate. My love for you has no strings attached. I love you for free.
“When we're incomplete, we're always searching for somebody to complete us.”
Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)
Context: When we're incomplete, we're always searching for somebody to complete us. When, after a few years or a few months of a relationship, we find that we're still unfulfilled, we blame our partners and take up with somebody more promising. This can go on and on — series polygamy — until we admit that while a partner can add sweet dimension to our lives, we, each of us, are responsible for our own fulfillment. Nobody else can provide it for us, and to believe otherwise is to delude ourselves dangerously and to program for eventual failure every relationship we enter.
“My love for you has no strings attached. I love you for free.”
Bernard to Leigh-Cheri, in Phase III, Ch. 46
Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)
Context: Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won’t adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honor and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet. That would mean that security is out of the question. The words “make” and “stay” become inappropriate. My love for you has no strings attached. I love you for free.
Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)
Context: How can one person be more real than any other? Well some people do hide and others seek. Maybe those who are hiding — escaping encounters, avoiding suprises, protecting their property, ignoring their fantasies, restricting their feelings, sitting out the Pan pipe hootchy-kootch of experience — maybe those people, people who won't talk to rednecks, or if they're rednecks won't talk to intellectuals, people who are afraid to get their shoes muddy or their noses wet, afraid to eat what they crave, afraid to drink Mexican water, afraid to bet a long shot to win, afraid to hitchhike, jaywalk, honky-tonk, cogitate, osculate, levitate, rock it, bop it, sock it, or bark at the moon, maybe such people are simply inauthentic, and maybe the jackleg humanist who says differently is due to have his tongue fried on the hot slabs of liars hell. Some folks hide and some folks seek, and seeking when its 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.
