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John Irving once told me he doesn't start a novel until he knows the last sentence. I said, 'My God, Irving, isn't that like working in a factory?'

Tom Robbins

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Tom Robbins
Age: 92
Born: 1932
Born: July 22
Author
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Blowing Rock
North Carolina
Thomas Eugene Robbins
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More quotes by Tom Robbins

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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.
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Genius may stand on the shoulders of giants, but it stands alone.
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Reality is contradictory. And it's paradoxical. If there's any one word -- if you had to pick one word to describe the nature of the universe -- I think that word would be paradox. That's true at the subatomic level, right through sociological, psychological, philosophical levels on up to cosmic levels.
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I had literary interests my whole life. I decided at the age of five I was going to be a writer. So I had done a great deal of reading. I suppose I was more at home in Greenwich Village than, say, any of classmates from Warsaw High School. But in any case, it was an overwhelming experience for me. It took me some time to begin to assimilate it.
Tom Robbins
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What an electric heater perched upon the rim of the bathtub of the world that dead Jesus was.
Tom Robbins
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Virtually every advancement made by our species since civilization first peeked out of its nest of stone has been initiated by lone individuals, mavericks who more often than not were ignored, mocked, or viciously persecuted by society and its institutions.
Tom Robbins
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If it is committed in the name of God or country, there is no crime so heinous that the public will not forgive it.
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I have never ever Googled myself, in fact I think the Christian right prohibits such things.
Tom Robbins
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People of ze wurl, relax!
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Once one pays some attention to something, then you begin to see evidence of it everywhere.
Tom Robbins
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red hair is caused by sugar and lust.
Tom Robbins
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If you're honest, you sooner or later have to confront your values. Then you're forced to separate what is right from what is merely legal. This puts you metaphysically on the run. America is full of metaphysical outlaws.
Tom Robbins
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Western civilization was declining too fast for comfort, but too slowly to be very exciting.
Tom Robbins
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The winter passed as slowly and peacefully as a boa constrictor digesting a valium addict.
Tom Robbins
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It was autumn, the springtime of death. Rain spattered the rotting leaves, and a wild wind wailed. Death was singing in the shower. Death was happy to be alive. The fetus bailed out without a parachute. It landed in the sideline Astroturf, so upsetting the cheerleaders that for the remained of the afternoon their rahs were more like squeaks.
Tom Robbins
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I show up in my writing room at approximately 10 A.M. every morning without fail. Sometimes my muse sees fit to join me there and sometimes she doesn't, but she always knows where I'll be. She doesn't need to go hunting in the taverns or on the beach or drag the boulevard looking for me.
Tom Robbins
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we've produced a generation of spiritual panhandlers, begging for coins of wisdom, banging like bums on every closed door...if an old man moves into a shack or a cave and lets his beard grow, people will flock from miles around just to read his no trespassing sign
Tom Robbins
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Transformation, liberation and celebration are the themes of all my novels.
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There exists a false aristocracy based on family name, property, and inherited wealth. But there likewise exists a true aristocracy based on intelligence, talent and virtue.
Tom Robbins
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You are an ignorant schoolgirl. You think civilization is a good thing.
Tom Robbins