Tom Robbins
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.Collection: Art
Individualism is bad for business - though absolutely necessary for freedom, progressive knowledge, and any possible interface with the transcendent.Collection: Individualism
It's entirely possible to function as a free-thinking individual without succumbing to narcissism. This can be tricky at times, I suppose, but then so can the tango - particularly if you're dancing alone.Collection: Thinking
What are the odds that two separate writers, strangers, a thousand miles apart, would each invent fictions in which guys take girls to an esoteric frog lecture on their first date? If that isn't synchronicity, it's something equally as weird.Collection: Girl
Admittedly, having a bit of disposable cash in the bank can give you a sense of Buddhistic calm, and despite the fallacy involved, that's probably preferable to the bonafide adventure of robbing a bank. A better alternative, however, is to learn to be at peace even when common sense (a highly overrated virtue) would lead you to believe that someone in your situation ought to feel threatened and insecure.Collection: Believe
Genius may stand on the shoulders of giants, but it stands alone.Collection: Giants
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.Collection: Eden
The truth, from my perspective, is that the world, indeed, is ending - and is also being reborn. It's been doing that all day, every day, forever.Collection: Perspective
I don't have a very high opinion, actually, of the world of criticism - or the practice of criticism. I think I admire art criticism, criticism of painting and sculpture, far more than I do that of say films and books, literary or film criticism. But I don't much like the practice. I think there are an awful lot of bad people in it.Collection: Art
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.Collection: Artist
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.Collection: Technology
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.Collection: Writing
Certain individual words do possess more pitch, more radiance, more shazam! than others, but it's the way words are juxtaposed with other words in a phrase or sentence that can create magic. Perhaps literally.Collection: Magic
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.Collection: Art
The pervasive brutality in current fiction - the death, disease, dysfunction, depression, dismemberment, drug addiction, dementia, and dreary little dramas of domestic discord - is an obvious example of how language in exploitative, cynical or simply neurotic hands can add to the weariness, the darkness in the world.Collection: Drama
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.Collection: Civilization
Just because something didn't happen doesn't mean it isn't true.Collection: Mean
I would only read the novels that people classify as ‘beach books’ if I were being held prisoner and the only alternative was the ‘Book of Mormon.’Collection: Book
Most Americans pay lip service to the idea of freedom, but can’t handle real freedom.Collection: Real
The human race has always defined itself through narration. That isn’t going to change just because we’ve gone electronic. What is changing is that now we’re allowing corporations to tell our stories for us.Collection: Stories
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.Collection: Book
The gods have chosen to entertain me with chronic eyestrain headaches. Very poisonous episodes. So I don’t do a lot of reading anymore except on tape.Collection: Reading
I never outline. I don’t work from an outline. I have no idea where the book is going. I mean, even two-thirds of the way through, I don’t know how it’s going to end.Collection: Book