We're our own dragons as well as our own heroes, and we have to rescue ourselves from ourselves.
Tom RobbinsRead
Outlaws, like lovers, poets, and tubercular composers who cough blood onto piano keys, do their finest work in the slippery rays of the moon.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Creativity often flourishes in unconventional or challenging circumstances.
In this quote, Tom Robbins suggests that some of the most profound and moving artistic expressions emerge from those who live on the fringes of society, much like outlaws or tortured artists. The imagery of 'slippery rays of the moon' suggests a beautiful yet unstable environment, where passion and suffering can lead to exceptional creativity.
Themes
CreativityArtLifeMoonOutlawsPoets
In practice
Example use cases
During a lecture on the nature of artistic inspiration, this quote can illustrate the connection between hardship and creativity.
More from Tom Robbins
All quotes βThere are many things worth living for, a few things worth dying for, and nothing worth killing for.
Tom RobbinsRead
The unhappy person resents it when you try to cheer him up, because that means he has to stop dwelling on himself and start paying attention to the universe. Unhappiness is the ultimate form of self-indulgence. When you're unhappy, you get to pay a lot of attention to yourself. You get to take yourself oh so very seriously.
Tom RobbinsRead
I'm an outlaw, not a philosopher, but I know this much: there's meaning in everything, all things are connected, and a good champagne is a drink.' Bernard began to sing again. Timidly, Leigh-Cheri joined in. Between verses, they opened another bottle. The popping of its cork echoed throughout the great stone chamber. Of the three billion people on earth, only Bernard and Leigh-Cheri heard the popping of the cork and its echoes. Only Bernard and Leigh-Cheri passed out under the tablecloth.
Tom RobbinsRead
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.
Tom RobbinsRead
On their sofas of spice and feathers, the concubines also slept fretfully. In those days the Earth was still flat, and people dreamed often of falling over edges.
Tom RobbinsRead
Similar quotes
As things are, and as fundamentally they must always be, poetry is not a career, but a mug's game. No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written: He may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing.
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For me, a page of good prose is where one hears the rain and the noise of battle. It has the power to give grief or universality that lends it a youthful beauty.
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I tell myself that I created the wardrobe of the contemporary woman, that I participated in the transformation of my times.
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Until I saw Chardin's painting, I never realized how much beauty lay around me in my parents' house, in the half-cleared table, in the corner of a tablecloth left awry, in the knife beside the empty oyster shell.
Marcel ProustRead