Quote

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

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

More quotes by Tom Robbins

Image
He was becoming unstuck, he was sure of that - his bones were no longer wrapped in flesh but in clouds of dust, in hummingbirds, dragonflies, and luminous moths - but so perfect was his equilibrium that he felt no fear. He was vast, he was many, he was dynamic, he was eternal.
Tom Robbins
Image
True stability results when presumed order and presumed disorder are balanced.
Tom Robbins
Image
If you lack the iron and the fizz to take control of your own life, then the gods will repay your weakness by having a grin or two at your expense. Should you fail to pilot your own ship, don't be surprised at what inappropriate port you find yourself docked.
Tom Robbins
Image
Rivers are the primal highways of life. From the crack of time, they had borne men's dreams, and in their lovely rush to elsewhere, fed our wanderlust, mimicked our arteries, and charmed our imaginations in a way the static pond or vast and savage ocean never could.
Tom Robbins
Image
People tend the take everything too seriously. Especially themselves. Yep. And that's probably what makes 'em scared and hurt so much of the time. Life is too serious to take that seriously.
Tom Robbins
Image
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
Image
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.
Tom Robbins
Image
And it rained a fever. And it rained a silence. And it rained a sacrifice. And it rained a miracle. And it rained sorceries and saturnine eyes of the totem.
Tom Robbins
Image
When a culture is being dumbed down as effectively as ours is, its narrative arts (literature, film, theatre) seem to vacillate between the brutal and the bland, sometimes in the same work.
Tom Robbins
Image
Don't trust anybody who'd rather be grammatically correct than have a good time.
Tom Robbins
Image
A hamburger is an icon of layered circles, the circle being at once the most spiritual and the most sensual of shapes.
Tom Robbins
Image
The trickster's function is to break taboos, create mischief, stir things up. In the end, the trickster gives people what they really want, some sort of freedom.
Tom Robbins
Image
I like to think of myself as a fiction writer who liked art enough to write about it for a while, and then went on to his fiction.
Tom Robbins
Image
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.
Tom Robbins
Image
Using words to describe magic is like using a screwdriver to cut roast beef.
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
Life's an offensive proposition from beginning to end. Maybe those who can't tolerate offense ought to just go ahead and end it all, and maybe those who demand financial compensation for offense ought to have it ended for them.
Tom Robbins
Image
Don't talk about it - you'll talk it away. Let the ideas flow from your mind to the page without exposing them to air. Especially hot air.
Tom Robbins
Image
Would you complain because a beautiful sunset doesn't have a future or a shooting star a payoff? And why should romance 'lead anywhere'? Passion isn't a path through the woods. Passion is the woods.
Tom Robbins
Image
The price of self-destiny is never cheap, and in certain situations it is unthinkable. But to achieve the marvelous, it is precisely the unthinkable that must be thought.
Tom Robbins