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Those same forces that drive a genius to create the things or ideas that entertain or enlighten us often gobble so much of his personality that he has none left for the social graces.

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
Create
Enlightening
Force
Entertain
Often
Forces
Social
Drive
Left
None
Ideas
Personality
Gobble
Much
Genius
Enlighten
Things
Grace
Graces

More quotes by Tom Robbins

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If you want your tree to produce plenty o' fruit, you've got to cut it back from time to time. Same thing with your neural cells. Some people might call it brain damage. I call it prunin'.
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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.
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Madame Lily Devalier always asked Where are you? in a way that insinuated that there were only two places on earth one could be: New Orleans and somewhere ridiculous.
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Eating a raw oyster is like french kissing a mermaid.
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In the beginning was the thing. And one thing led to another.
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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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A hamburger is an icon of layered circles, the circle being at once the most spiritual and the most sensual of shapes.
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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.
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Meditation... dissolves the mind. It erases itself. Throws the ego out on its big brittle ass.
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You may tell the greatest lies and wear a brilliant disguise, but you can't escape the eyes of the one who sees right through you.
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Zippers are primal and modern at the very same time. On the one hand, your zipper is primitive and reptilian, on the other, mechanical and slick. A zipper is where the Industrial Revolution meets the Cobra Cult.
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What is politics, after all, but the compulsion to preside over property and make other peoples' decisions for them?
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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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Not naive,' Conch shell had corrected him. 'He simply has not been taught to fear the things you fear.
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Normality is the Great Neurosis of civilization.
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When we can converse with the animals, we will know the change is halfway here. When we can converse with the forest, we will know the change has come.
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I journey to the east, where I have been told, there are men who have taught death some manners.
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The very act of creation requires such focused concentration that vast areas of knowledge may be completely overlooked. Well, so what? There is no evidence that generalized skills are in any way superior to specialized brilliance.
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There is only one serious question. And that is: Who knows how to make love stay? Answer me that and I will tell you whether or not to kill yourself.
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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