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Should one be shallow enough to view existence as a system of rewards and punishments, one soon learns that we pay as dearly for our triumphs as we do for our defeats.

Tom Robbins

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Tom Robbins
Age: 92
Born: 1932
Born: July 22
Author
Autobiographer
Biographer
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
Blowing Rock
North Carolina
Thomas Eugene Robbins
Pay
Learns
Views
Shallow
System
Triumph
Existence
Punishment
Enough
Rewards
Punishments
Defeat
Dearly
Soon
Defeats
View
Triumphs

More quotes by Tom Robbins

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You don't have to be a genius to recognize one. If you did, Einstein would never have gotten invited to the White House.
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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.
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I go into a gallery or museum, and I realize that I don't have to formulate any opinions if I don't want to. I don't have to think this thing through and write about it at any great length. I can think about it if I want to if not, I can just walk out. So I can enjoy painting really a lot more than I could when I had that sort of pressure.
Tom Robbins
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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.
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Solace? That's why God made fermented beverages and the blues.
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The Middle Ages hangs over history's belt like a beer belly. It is too late now for aerobic dancing or cottage cheese lunches to reduce the Middle Ages. History will have to wear size 48 shorts forever.
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All dreams continue in the beyond.
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Above all, have a good time. If you aren’t enjoying writing it, you can hardly expect someone else to enjoy reading it.
Tom Robbins
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Always compare yourself to the best. Even if you never measure up, it can't help but make you better.
Tom Robbins
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All depression has its roots in self-pity, and all self-pity is rooted in people taking themselves too seriously.
Tom Robbins
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Usually, autobiography is such an indulgence of the ego.
Tom Robbins
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Human folly does not impede the turning of the stars.
Tom Robbins
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If you take any activity, any art, any discipline, any skill-take it and push it as far as it will go, push it beyond where it has ever been before, push it to the wildest edges of edges, then you force it into the realm of magic.
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The odor of frying bacon, sausage links, and ham tiptoed on little pig feet all the way to the north end of the second floor. Inevitably, the odor made her simultaneously ravenous and nauseated. She hated the sensation. It reminded her of pregnancy. Every Sunday morning, Leigh-Cheri awoke to a pan of fried fear.
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In East of Eden, John Steinbeck wrote that there's never been a great creative collaboration. When the Beatles first burst on the scene, I thought they were proving him wrong. Later, we learned that Lennon and McCartney had each composed their pop masterpieces separately, individually. So it goes.
Tom Robbins
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My life is not merely a public phenomenon, it is a solitary adventure as well.
Tom Robbins
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As a child, I was an imaginary playmate.
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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One tended to lose one’s bearings in the presence of willful and persistent acts of craziness, and the more gentle the act, the crazier it seemed, as if rage and violence, being closer to the norm, were easier to accommodate.
Tom Robbins
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Should you fail to pilot your own ship, don't be surprised at what inappropriate port you find yourself docked.
Tom Robbins