Tom Robbins - Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1976)

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Unfortunately, little darlings, there is no such thing as a simple love story.The most transitory puppy crush is complex to the extent of lying beyond the far reaches of the brain's understanding.

Tom Robbins
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.

Tom Robbins
Let us, rather, gather facts, all the facts, regardless of aesthetic appeal or theoretical social worth, and spread those facts before us not as the soothsayer spreads the innards of a turkey but as a newspaper spreads its columns. Let us be journalists, then. And like all good journalists, we shall present our facts in an order that will satisfy the famous five W's: wow, whoopee, wahoo, why-not and whew.

Tom Robbins
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
A sneeze travels at a peak velocity of two hundred miles per hour. A burp, more slowly; a fart, slower yet. But a kiss thrown by fingers- its departure is sudden, its arrival ambiguous, and there is no source that can state with authority what speeds are reached in its flight.

Tom Robbins
You have taught us much. Come with us and join the movement." "This movement of yours, does it have slogans?" inquired the Chink. "Right on!" they cried. And they quoted him some. "Your movement, does it have a flag?" asked the Chink. "You bet!" and they described their emblem. "And does your movement have leaders?" "Great leaders." "Then shove it up your butts," said the Chink. "I have taught you nothing.

Tom Robbins
Sounds travel through space long after their wave patterns have ceased to be detectable by the human ear: some cut right through the ionosphere and barrel on out into the cosmic heartland, while others bounce around, eventually being absorbed into the vibratory fields of earthly barriers, but in neither case does the energy succumb; it goes on forever - which is why we, each of us, should take pains to make sweet notes.

Tom Robbins
Embrace failure! Seek it out. Learn to love it. That may be the only way any of us will ever be free.

Tom Robbins
Love easily confuses us because it is always in flux between illusion and substance, between memory and wish, between contentment and need.

Tom Robbins
Growing up is a trap," snapped Dr. Robbins. "When they tell you to shut up, they mean stop talking. When they tell you to grow up, they mean stop growing. Reach a nice level plateau and settle there, predictable and unchanging, no longer a threat.

Tom Robbins
The brown paper bag is the only thing civilized man has produced that does not seem out of place in nature.

Tom Robbins