Quote

All depression has its roots in self-pity, and all self-pity is rooted in people taking themselves too seriously.

Tom Robbins

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Tom Robbins
Age: 92
Born: 1932
Born: July 22
Author
Autobiographer
Biographer
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
Blowing Rock
North Carolina
Thomas Eugene Robbins
Depression
Pity
Seriously
Roots
Taking
Self
People
Rooted

More quotes by Tom Robbins

Image
Throughout most of our history, nothing - not flood, famine, plague, or new weapons - has endangered humanity one-tenth as much as the narcissistic ego, with its self-aggrandizing presumptions and its hell-hound spawn of fear and greed.
Tom Robbins
Image
Often, moreover, it is...that aspect of our being that society finds eccentric, ridiculous, or disagreeable, that holds our sweet waters, our secret well of happiness, the key to our equanimity in malevolent climes.
Tom Robbins
Image
Who knows how to make love stay? Tell love you are going to the Junior's Deli on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn to pick up a cheesecake, and if love stays, it can have half.
Tom Robbins
Image
I journey to the east, where I have been told, there are men who have taught death some manners.
Tom Robbins
Image
I believed in looking at people as individuals, not in groups. I hated groups still do. And I saw particularly the university, the university artists really acted as a group. The others didn't so much, but the university people took advantage of that and behaved like a group, rather than as individuals. They had a lot of power that way.
Tom Robbins
Image
Very few people can write in a crowd. This is a very solitary occupation. I have known people more talented than me who never made it. And the primary reason was always that they couldn't stand to be alone for several hours a day. Any writer worth anything has mastered the art. The art of solitude.
Tom Robbins
Image
Writing a novel is not so much a project as a journey, a voyage, an adventure.
Tom Robbins
Image
The new wrinkle is that escalating advances in technology are nourishing the narcissistic ego the way chicken manure nourishes a rose bush, while exploding worldwide population is allowing its effects to multiply geometrically.
Tom Robbins
Image
Logic only gives man what he needs... Magic gives him what he wants.
Tom Robbins
Image
I think science has begun to demonstrate that aging is a disease. If it is, it can be cured.
Tom Robbins
Image
what bothers me today is the lack of, well, i guess you'd call it authentic experience. so much is a sham. so much is artificial, synthetic, watered-down, and standardized...we're standardizing people, their goals, their ideas. the sham is everywhere.
Tom Robbins
Image
Deep down, all of us are probably aware that some kind of mystical evolution is our true task. Yet we suppress the notion with considerable force because to admit it is to admit that most of our political gyrations, religious dogmas, social ambitions, and financial ploys are not merely counter-productive but trivial.
Tom Robbins
Image
One of my books is a hallucinogen, an aphrodisiac, a mood elevator, an intellectual garage door opener, and a metaphysical trash compactor. They'll do everything except rotate your tires.
Tom Robbins
Image
Eating a raw oyster is like french kissing a mermaid.
Tom Robbins
Image
I started writing when I was 5 years old. I would dictate stories to my mother, and she would copy them in a scrapbook. If she changed anything to make it, in her opinion, better, I would throw a tantrum.
Tom Robbins
Image
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.
Tom Robbins
Image
Never be afraid to make a fool of yourself. The furthest out you can go is the best place to be.
Tom Robbins
Image
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
Image
Choice. It's the word that allows yes and the word that makes no possible. It's the word that puts the free in freedom and takes obligation out of the mix. It's the word upon which adventure, exhilaration, and authenticity depend. It's the word that the cocoon whispers to the caterpillar.
Tom Robbins
Image
A thing is good because it is good, not because it is natural. A thing is bad because it is bad, not because its artificial. It is not a damn iota better to be bitten by a rattlesnake than shot by a gun.
Tom Robbins