Thread: Tom Robbins!!

Never had the pleasure...

Excellent stuff.

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues is a classic.

Still Life was alright, not my kind of thing though. Still, I should read another just to be sure....

Some quotes:

“Religion is not merely the opium of the masses, it's the cyanide.”

“There are many things worth living for, a few things worth dying for, and nothing worth killing for.”

“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.”

“Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business.”

“Politics is for people who have a passion for changing life but lack a passion for living it”

“Should one be shallow enough to view existence as a system of rewards and punishments, one soon learns that we pay as dearly for our triumphs as we do for our defeats ...”

“Philosophers have argued for centuries about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but materialists have always known it depends on whether they are jitterbugging or dancing cheek to cheek”

Lines from "Fierce Invalids..."

"All depression has its roots in self-pity, and all self-pity is rooted in people taking themselves too seriously."


"Humanity is generally offensive," he told her happily. "Life's an offensive proposition from beginning to end. Maybe those who can't tolerate offense ought to just go ahead and end it all, and maybe those who demand financial compensation for offense ought to have it ended for them."


"Faites de beaux rêves, monsieur," she called as she put out the light.
Switters had always loved that expression, "Make fine dreams." In contrast to the English, "Have sweet dreams," the French implied that the sleeper was not a passive spectator, a captive audience, but had some control over and must accept some responsiblity for his or her dreaming. Moreover, a "fine" dream had much wider connotations than a "sweet" one."

"My grandmother," he said, "confessed to me once that before she'd ever let herself become deeply involved with a man, she'd make sure to get him drunk. Maestra claims you can never know who a person really is unless you've seen how they behave when under the spell of Bacchus. It's a hard and fast rule with no exceptions: a bad drunk will make a bad husband. Or wife, for that matter. Sobriety, for some people, is a thin and temporary disguise."

The French say that the best part of an affair is going up the stairs. Desire is almost always more thrilling than fulfillment.

... while Switters appreciated profanity's occasional value as verbal punctuation, as a highly effective vehicle for emphasis, he was scornful when louts swore as a substitute for vocabulary, youths as a substitute for rebellion, stand-up comics as a substitute for wit.

I played horseshoes with him as a kid in the Skagit Valley