tom robbins = :)

--The scientist keeps the romantic honest, and the romantic keeps the scientist human.

--There are essential and inessential insanities. The latter are solar in character, the former are linked to the moon.

--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.

--If you believe in peace, act peacefully; if you believe in love, acting lovingly; if you believe every which way, then act every which way, that's perfectly valid - but don't go out trying to sell your beliefs to the system. You end up contradicting what you profess to believe in, and you set a bum example. If you want to change the world, change yourself.

--Future? Oh, I get it. You mean you don't foresee a pot of gold at the end of our juicy rainbow. You mean that our intimacy isn't likely to yield a dividend You disappoint me, Gwendolyn. I hoped you might have a watt or two more light in your bulb than those poor toads who look on romance as an investment, like waterfront property or municipal bonds 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. Passion is the woods. It's the deepest wildest part of the forest; the grove where the fairies still dance and obscene old vipers snooze in the boughs. Everybody but the most dried up and dysfunctional is drawn to the grove and enchanted by its mysteries, but then they just can't wait to call in the chain saws and bulldozers and replace it with a family-style restaurant or a new S and L. That's the payoff, I guess. Safety. Security. Certainty. Yes, indeed. Well, remember this, pussy latte: we're not involved in a 'relationship', you and I, we're involved in a collision. Collisions don't much lend themselves to secure futures, but the act of colliding is hard to beat for interest. Correct me if I'm wrong.

--You should never hesitate to trade your cow for a handful of magic beans.

--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.

--Real courage is risking something that you have to keep on living with, real courage is risking something that might force you to rethink your thoughts and suffer change and stretch consciousness. Real courage is risking one's cliches.

--Birth and death were easy. It was life that was hard.

--She needed help, but God was in a meeting whenever she rang.

--Politics is for people who have a passion for changing life but lack a passion for living it.

--To emphasize the afterlife is to deny life. To concentrate on Heaven is to create hell. In their desperate longing to transcend the disorderliness, friction, and unpredictability that pesters life; in their desire for a fresh start in a tidy habitat, germ-free and secured by angels, religious multitudes are gambling the only life they may ever have on a dark horse in a race that has no finish line.

--People tend to take everything too seriously. Especially themselves. Yep. And that's probably what makes 'em scared and hurt so much of the time. Life is too serious to take that seriously.

--Religion was an attempt to pin down the Divine. The Divine was eternally in flux, forever moving, shifting shape. That was its nature. It was absolute, true enough: absolutely mobile. Absolutely transcendent. Absolutely flexible. Absolutely impersonal. It had its god and goddess aspects, but it was ultimately no more male or female that it was star or screwdriver. It was the sum of all those things, but that sum could never be chalked on a slate. The Divine was beyond description, beyond knowing, beyond comprehension. To say that the Divine was Creation divided by Destruction was as close as one could come to definition. But the puny of soul, the dull of wit, weren't content with that. They wanted to hang a face on the Divine. They went so far as to attribute petty human emotions (anger, jealousy, etc.) to it, not stopping to realize that if God were a being, even a supreme being, our prayers would have bored him to death long ago.

--Don't trust anybody who'd rather be grammatically correct than have a good time.

--I believe in nothing, everything is sacred. I believe in everything, nothing is sacred.

--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.

--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.

--Our similarities bring us to a common ground; our differences allow us to be fascinated by each other.

--There's no such thing as a weird human being. It's just that some people require more understanding than others.

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

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

--When life demands more of people than they demand of life - as is ordinarily the case - what results is a resentment of life almost as deep-seated as the fear of death.

--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.

--To be or not to be isn't the question. The question is how to prolong being.

--A better world has gotta start somewhere. Why not with you and me?

--If God had a bumper sticker, it would probably read SHINE, DON'T WHINE.

--I journey to the East, where I have been told that there are men who have taught Death some manners.