911 Quotes by Tom Robbins

There’s birth, there’s death, and in between there’s maintenance.

Amnesia is not knowing who one is and wanting desperately to find out. Euphoria is not knowing who one is and not caring. Ecstasy is knowing exactly who one is – and still not caring.

Kissing is man’s greatest invention. All animals copulate, but only humans kiss.

It’s a privilege to love someone, to truly love them; and while it’s paradisaical if she or he loves you back, it’s unfair to demand or expect reciprocity. We should consider ourselves luck, honored, blessed that we possess the capacity to feel tenderness of such magnitude and be grateful even when that love is not returned. Love is the only game in which we win even when we lose.

I asked Mr. Wrangle what you were like. He said you were hornet juice and rosebuds in a container of gazelle meat.

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.

We only rise above mediocrity when there’s something at stake. p. 174.

Evidently, I’d suffered an epiphany: the subconscious realization that when it comes to coolness, nothing the human race has ever invented is more cool than a book.

When you blow up a major life situation, as I did on two fronts before leaving Richmond, the explosion can leave a hole in your psyche. Nature abhors a vacuum, however, and over time the crater is almost certain to fill in with new wisdom – or fresh folly. Sometimes it can be a challenge to tell the difference.