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

My personal motto has always been: Joy in spite of everything. Not just [mindless] joy, but joy in spite of everything. Recognizing the inequities and the suffering and the corruption and all that but refusing to let it rain on my parade. And I advocate this to other people.

Once, in a spasm of sappiness, you asked Q-Jo if she thought your dreams would ever come true. 'You aren't talking about dreams,' she corrected you, 'you're referring to your pathetic bourgeoisie ambitions. Dreams don't come true. Dreams are true.

When we accept bad art because it's good politics, we're killing the swan to feed the chickens.

If you need to visualize the soul, think of it as a cross between a wolf howl, a photon and a dribble of dark molasses. But what it really is, as near as I can tell, is a packet of information. It's a program, a piece of hyperspatial software designed explicitly to interface with the Mystery. Not a mystery, mind you - the Mystery. The one that can never be solved.

Our greatest human adventure is the evolution of consciousness. We are in this life to enlarge the soul, liberate the spirit, and light up the brain.

Our world isn't made of earth, air and water or even molecules and atoms; our world is made of language.

A lot of aspiring writers are all ready to write a novel, but they don't know how to write sentences.

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

Never be afraid to make a fool of yourself. The furthest out you can go is the best place to be.

Dreams don't come true. Dreams are true.

Of course I'm inconsistent! Only logicians and cretins are consistent!

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.

I am looking for the novelists whose writing is an extension of their intellect rather than an extension of their neurosis.

And what would our ideas of God, of religion, be like if they had come to us through the minds of women? Ever think of that?

My faith is whatever makes me feel good about being alive. If your religion doesn't make you feel good to be alive, what the hell is the point of it?

The difference between love and logic is that in the eyes of a lover, a toad can be a prince, whereas in the analysis of a logistician, the lover would have to prove that the toad was a prince, an enterprise destined to dull the shine of many a passion.

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.

And it rained a fever. And it rained a silence. And it rained a sacrifice. And it rained a miracle. And it rained sorceries and saturnine eyes of the totem.

Self-esteem is for sissies. Accept that you're a pimple and try to keep a lively sense of humor about it. That way lies grace - and maybe even glory.

…he glanced over his shoulder at her, regarding her, as he often did before they made love, as if she were a lost continent about to be rediscovered.