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Tom Robbins
144 quotes
“When a man confines an animal in a cage, he assumes ownership of that animal. But an animal is an individual; it cannot be owned. When a man tries to own an individual, whether that individual be another man, an animal or even a tree, he suffers the psychic consequences of an unnatural act.”
Tom Robbins (1932–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is no such thing as a weird human being. It's just that some people require more understanding than others.”
Tom Robbins (1932–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The only meat in the world sweeter, hotter, and pinker than Amanda's twat is Carolina barbecue.”
Tom Robbins (1932–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Whether a man is a criminal or a public servant is purely a matter of perspective.”
Tom Robbins (1932–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The function of the artist is to provide what life does not.”
Tom Robbins (1932–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Logic only gives man what he needs. Magic gives him what he wants.”
Tom Robbins (1932–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Fire is the reuniting of matter with oxygen. If one bears that in mind, every blaze may be seen as a reunion, an occasion of chemical joy.”
Tom Robbins (1932–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Love is dope, not chicken soup.”
Tom Robbins (1932–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So you think that you're a failure, do you? Well, you probably are. What's wrong with that? In the first place, if you've any sense at all you must have learned by now that we pay just as dearly for our triumphs as we do for our defeats. Go ahead and fail. But fail with wit, fail with grace, fail with style. A mediocre failure is as insufferable as a mediocre success. Embrace failure! Seek it out. Learn to love it. That may be the only way any of us will ever be free.”
Tom Robbins (1932–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If we're ever going to get the world back on a natural footing, back in tune with natural rhythyms, if we're going to nurture the Earth and protect it and have fun with it and learn from it — which is what mothers do with their children — then we've got to put technology (an aggressive masculine system) in its proper place, which is that of a tool to be used sparingly, joyfully, gently and only in the fullest cooperation with nature. Nature must govern technology, not the other way around.”
Tom Robbins (1932–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There are many things worth living for, there are a few things worth dying for, but there is nothing worth killing for.”
Tom Robbins (1932–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sometimes those things that attract the most attention to us are the things that afford us the greatest privacy.”
Tom Robbins (1932–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Of course I've contradicted myself. I always do. Only cretins and logicians don't contradict themselves. And in their consistency, they contradict life.”
Tom Robbins (1932–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There are only two mantras... yum and yuk. Mine is yum.”
Tom Robbins (1932–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I’m not quite twenty, but, thanks to you, I’ve learned something that many women these days never learn: Prince Charming really is a toad. And the Beautiful Princess has halitosis. The bottom line is that (a) people are never perfect, but love can be, (b) that is the one and only way that the mediocre and the vile can be transformed, and (c) doing that makes it that. Loving makes love. Loving makes itself. We waste time looking for the perfect lover instead of creating the perfect love. Wouldn’t that be the way to make love stay?”
Tom Robbins (1932–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Tom Robbins (1932–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It's not men who limit women, it's not straights who limit gays, it's not whites who limit blacks. What limits people is lack of character. What limits people is that they don't have the fucking nerve or imagination to star in their own movie, let alone direct it.”
Tom Robbins (1932–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Tequila, scorpion honey, harsh dew of the doglands, essence of Aztec, crema de cacti; tequila, oily and thermal like the sun in solution; tequila, liquid geometry of passion; Tequila, the buzzard God who copulates in midair with the ascending souls of dying virgins; tequila, firebug in the house of good taste; O tequila, savage water of sorcery, what confusion and mischief your sly, rebellious drops do generate!”
Tom Robbins (1932–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Albert Camus wrote that the only serious question is whether to kill yourself or not. Tom Robbins wrote that the only serious question is whether time has a beginning or an end. Camus clearly got up on the wrong side of the bed, and Robbins must have forgotten to set the alarm. There is only one serious question. And that question is: "Who knows how to make love stay?".”
Tom Robbins (1932–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Tom Robbins (1932–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If this typewriter can't do it, then fuck it, it can't be done.”
Tom Robbins (1932–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Society had a crime problem. It hired cops to attack crime. Now society has a cop problem.”
Tom Robbins (1932–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I sense that novel of my dreams is in the Remington SL3 — although it writes much faster than I can spell.”
Tom Robbins (1932–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This baby (the Remington SL3 typewriter) speaks electric Shakespeare at the slightest provocation and will rap out a page and a half if you just look at it hard.”
Tom Robbins (1932–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1932–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Tom Robbins (1932–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Her surname resembled a line from an optometrist's examination chart.”
Tom Robbins (1932–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Hawaii made the mouth of her soul water.”
Tom Robbins (1932–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They'd be no threat to me. I have a black belt in Haiku. And a black vest in the cleaners.”
Tom Robbins (1932–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There are essential and inessential insanities. The latter are solar in character, the former are linked to the moon.”
Tom Robbins (1932–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sharks are the criminals of the sea. Dolphins are the outlaws.”
Tom Robbins (1932–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She lunched on papaya poo poo or mango mu mu or some other fruity foo foo bursting with overripe tropical vowels.”
Tom Robbins (1932–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There are two kinds of people in this world : those who believe there are two kinds of people in this world and those who are smart enough to know better.”
Tom Robbins (1932–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He looked at her with that kind of painted-on seriousness that comedians shift into when they get their chance to play Hamlet.”
Tom Robbins (1932–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The man and woman firmly shook hands. The solution to the overpopulation problem might rest in such handshakes.”
Tom Robbins (1932–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A better world has gotta start somewhere. Why not with you and me?”
Tom Robbins (1932–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If you're honest, you sooner or later have to confront your values. Then you're forced to separate what is right from what is merely legal. This puts you metaphysically on the run. America is full of metaphysical outlaws.”
Tom Robbins (1932–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They snuggled closer, and when they were as close as they could get without being behind one another, they commenced to kiss again.”
Tom Robbins (1932–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This stuff's so fine Julius Caesar called for it with his dying breath. 'A toot, Brutus,' is what he said.”
Tom Robbins (1932–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Something has got to hold it together. I'm saying my prayers to Elmer, the Greek god of glue.”
Tom Robbins (1932–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I'll follow him to the ends of the earth," she sobbed. Yes, darling. But the earth doesn't have any ends. Columbus fixed that.”
Tom Robbins (1932–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A rabbi's dog could score pork chops in the streets of Tel Aviv easier than Bernard could acquire tequila in King County Jail.”
Tom Robbins (1932–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She tried out the chamber pot, although she really had nothing to contribute.”
Tom Robbins (1932–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Any half-awake materialist well knows — that which you hold holds you.”
Tom Robbins (1932–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The first time that she spread her legs for him it had been like opening her jaws for the dentist.”
Tom Robbins (1932–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Funny how we think of romance as always involving two, when the romance of solitude can be ever so much more delicious and intense.”
Tom Robbins (1932–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I'll never write another novel on an electric typewriter. I'd rather use a sharp stick and a little pile of dogshit.”
Tom Robbins (1932–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It's never too late to have a happy childhood.”
Tom Robbins (1932–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Bernard Mickey Wrangle had developed a psychological test of his own. It was short, simple, and infallible. To administer the test, merely ask the subject to name his or her favorite Beatle. If you are at all familiar with the distinct separate public images of the four Beatles, then you'll recognize that the one chosen reveals as much about the subject's personality as most of us will ever hope to know.”
Tom Robbins (1932–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1932–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source