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a2d90c9
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If little else, the brain is an educational toy. The problem with possessing such an engaging toy is that other people want to play with it, too. Sometime they'd rather play with yours than theirs. Or they object if you play with yours in a different manner from the way they play with theirs. The result is, a few games out of a toy department of possibilities are universally and endlessly repeated. If you don't play some people's game, they..
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individuality
deviance
normalizing
society
games
toys
creativity
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Tom Robbins |
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3066761
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Death is impatient and thoughtless. It barges into your room when you are right in the middle of something, and it doesn't bother to wipe its boots.
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rudeness
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Tom Robbins |
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ea9713d
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I cannot believe that the most delicious things were placed here merely to test us, to temp us, to make it the more difficult for us to capture the grand prize: the safety of the void. To fashion of life such a petty game is unworthy of both men and gods.
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Tom Robbins |
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f498738
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If this typewriter can't do it, then fuck it, it can't be done.
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Tom Robbins |
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b1454ff
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The beet is the most intense of vegetables. The radish, admittedly, is more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent, not of passion. Tomatoes are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity. Beets are deadly serious.
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Tom Robbins |
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4bcffd1
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ideas are definitely unstable, they not only CAN be misused, they invite misuse--and the better the idea the more volatile it is. That's because only the better ideas turn into dogma, and it is this process whereby a fresh, stimulating, humanly helpful idea is changed into robot dogma that is deadly. In terms of hazardous vectors released, the transformation of ideas into dogma rivals the transformation of hydrogen into helium, uranium into..
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repression
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Tom Robbins |
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89eab91
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ideas are definitely unstable, they not only CAN be misused, they invite misuse--and the better the idea the more volatile it is. That's because only the better ideas turn into dogma, and it is this process whereby a fresh, stimulating, humanly helpful idea is changed into robot dogma that is deadly. In terms of hazardous vectors released, the transformation of ideas into dogma rivals the transformation of hydrogen into helium, uranium into..
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repression
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Tom Robbins |
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cdd05cb
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A book no more contains reality than a clock contains time. A book may measure so-called reality as a clock measures so-called time; a book may create an illusion of reality as a clock creates an illusion of time; a book may be real, just as a clock is real (both more real, perhaps, than those ideas to which they allude); but let's not kid ourselves - all a clock contains is wheels and springs and all a book contains is sentences.
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Tom Robbins |
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fc97e68
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Normality is the Great Neurosis of civilization.
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normality
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Tom Robbins |
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b170b79
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There are people in this world who can wear whale masks and people who cannot, and the wise know to which group they belong.
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whale
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Tom Robbins |
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0ab6758
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The price of self-destiny is never cheap, and in certain situations it is unthinkable. But to achieve the marvelous, it is precisely the unthinkable that must be thought.
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Tom Robbins |
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a5a231a
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Perhaps a person gains by accumulating obstacles. The more obstacles set up to prevent happiness from appearing, the greater the shock when it does appear, just as the rebound of a spring will be all the more powerful the greater the pressure that has been exerted to compress it. Care must be taken, however, to select large obstacles, for only those of sufficient scope and scale have the capacity to lift us out of context and force life to ..
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Tom Robbins |
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315a49b
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Never be afraid to love, not even when there's a chance you're not being loved in return.
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Tom Robbins |
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9fa1ad8
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Sissy: You really don't believe in political solutions do you? The Chink: I believe in political solutions to political problems. But man's primary problems aren't political; they're philosophical. Until humans can solve their philosophical problems, they're condemned to solve their political problems over and over and over again. It's a cruel, repetitious bore. Sissy: Well, then, what are the philosophical solutions? The Chink: Ha ha ho ho..
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Tom Robbins |
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2351d9d
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Whatever goes wrong can be used to your advantage, providing it goes wrong enough.
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Tom Robbins |
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fffd271
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Plans are one thing and fate another. When they coincide, success results. Yet success mustn't be considered the absolute. It is questionable, for that matter, whether success is an adequate resposne to life. Success can eliminate as many options as failure.
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Tom Robbins |
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4a0baac
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The highest function of love is that it makes the loved one a unique and irreplaceable being. Still, lovers quarrel. Frequently, they quarrel simply to recharge the air between them, to sharpen the aliveness of their relationship. To precipitate such a quarrel, the sweaty kimono of sexual jealousy is usually dragged out of the hamper, although almost any excuse will do. Only rarely is the spat rooted in the beet-deep soil of serious issue, ..
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Tom Robbins |
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1cbf73b
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Nobody quite knew what to make of the moon any more.
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Tom Robbins |
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b823f4b
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Every day is Judgement Day. Always has been. Always will be.
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Tom Robbins |
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d520221
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Birth and death were easy. It was life that was hard.
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death
life
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Tom Robbins |
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8d99e85
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Whether a man is a criminal or a public servant is purely a matter of perspective.
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humor
relativism
ethics
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Tom Robbins |
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edc2c27
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Life is like a stew, you have to stir it frequently, or all the scum rises to the top.
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Tom Robbins |
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d6e2a3a
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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?
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Tom Robbins |
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7ae96e6
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In the beginning was the thing. And one thing led to another.
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Tom Robbins |
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94aaab6
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A person's looking for a simple truth to live by, there it is. CHOICE. To refuse to passively accept what we've been handed by nature or society, but to choose for ourselves. CHOICE. That's the difference between emptiness and substance, between a life actually lived and a wimpy shadow cast on an office wall.
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free-will
life
still-life-with-woodpecker
tom-robbins
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Tom Robbins |
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95dc0fb
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Bones are patient. Bones never tire nor do they run away. When you come upon a man who has been dead many years, his bones will still be lying there, in place, content, patiently waiting, but his flesh will have gotten up and left him. Water is like flesh. Water will not stand still. It is always off to somewhere else; restless, talkative, and curious. Even water in a covered jar will disappear in time. Flesh is water. Stones are like bones..
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immortality
death
life
transitory
stones
permanence
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Tom Robbins |
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7492982
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The Conch Shell's tint was that of a vagina blowing bubble gum.
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Tom Robbins |
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58f22aa
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At birth, we emerge from dream soup. At death, we sink back into dream soup. In between soups, there is a crossing of dry land. Life is a portage.
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Tom Robbins |
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cd1dcef
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I rather like the smell of absurdity in the morning.
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Tom Robbins |
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fb51beb
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In times of widespread chaos and confusion, it has been the duty of more advanced human beings--artists, scientists, clowns and philosophers--to create order. In times such as ours, however, when there is too much order, too much management, too much programming and control, it becomes the duty of superior men and women to fling their favorite monkey wrenches into the machinery. To relive the repression of the human spirit, they must sow do..
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doubt
disruption
system
order
revolution
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Tom Robbins |
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dda3ca3
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Laws, it is said, are for the protection of the people. It's unfortunate that there are no statistics on the number of lives that are clobbered yearly as a result of laws: outmoded laws; laws that found their way onto the books as a result of ignorance, hysteria or political haymaking; antilife laws; biased laws; laws that pretend that reality is fixed and nature is definable; laws that deny people the right to refuse protection. A survey s..
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laws
sociology
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Tom Robbins |
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0a4de52
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The protagonist, Amanda, discusses her sex relationship with her husband, John Paul -- As long as it's done with honesty and grace, John Paul doesn't mind if I go to bed with other men. Or with other girls, as is sometimes my fancy. What has marriage got to do with it? Marriage is not a synonym for monogamy any more than monogamy is a synonym for ideal love. To live lightly on the earth, lovers and families must be more flexible and relaxed..
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relationships
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Tom Robbins |
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fbd5f3e
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It's hard to say who's a greater threat to the world, an ambitious CEO with a big ad budget or a crafty cleric with an obsolete Bible verse.
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Tom Robbins |
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f5c15d0
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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 the woods.
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Tom Robbins |
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44b2aee
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I've lived most of my adult life outside the law, and never have I compromised with authority. But neither have I gone out and picked fights with authority. That's stupid. They're waiting for that; they invite it; it helps keep them powerful. Authority is to be ridiculed, outwitted and avoided. And it is fairly easy to do all three. If you believe in peace, act peacefully; if you believe in love, act lovingly; if you believe every which way..
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Tom Robbins |
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7527dde
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Outlaws, like lovers, poets, and tubercular composers who cough blood onto piano keys, do their finest work in the slippery rays of the moon.
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Tom Robbins |
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226b0d6
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I mean that gods do not limit men. Men limit men.
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men
limits
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Tom Robbins |
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d234a8a
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A mask has but one expression, frozen and eternal, yet it is always and ever the essential expression, and to hide one's telltale flesh behind the external skeleton of the mask is to display the universal identity of the inner being in place of the outer identity that is transitory and corrupt. The freedom of the masked is not the vulgar political freedom of the successful revolutionary, but the magical freedom of the Divine, beyond politic..
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Tom Robbins |
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a158273
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Whenever a state or an individual cited 'insufficient funds' as an excuse for neglecting this important thing or that, it was indicative of the extent to which reality had been distorted by the abstract lens of wealth. During periods of so-called economic depression, for example, societies suffered for want of all manner of essential goods, yet investigation almost invariably disclosed that there were plenty of goods available. Plenty of co..
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money
wealth
economic-depression
recessions
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Tom Robbins |
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87d241d
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To concentrate on heaven is to create hell.
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Tom Robbins |
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664c35e
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Serious reading is hardly a social activity and every halfway serious reader is perpetually subject to a form of coitus interruptus. Family members or friends who lack the desire, the courage, or the opportunity to burst in on you when there's some indication that you could be sexually entwined will seldom hesitate to interject themselves between you and a page, even though the act of reading is often as intimate and intense as a full-fledg..
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Tom Robbins |
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a0b0c00
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He who jokes in the executioners face can be destroyed, but never defeated.
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Tom Robbins |
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8154e0b
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My desire was no less than before, you understand, but I no longer identified with the desire. Perhaps that is why taking them too seriously, we not only increase our susceptibility to disappointment, we actually create a climate inhospitable to the free and easy fulfillment of those desires.
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Tom Robbins |
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e008b5e
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How we shape our understanding of others' lives is determined by what we find memorable in them, and that in turn is determined not by any potentially accurate overview of another's personality but rather by the tension and balance that exist in our daily relationships.
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Tom Robbins |