Words of Wisdom by Tom Robbins: From Still Life with Woodpecker

“How can one person be more real than any other? Well, some people do hide and others seek. Maybe those who are in hiding - escaping encounters, avoiding surprises, protecting their property, ignoring their fantasies, restricting their feelings, sitting out the pan pipe hootchy-kootch of experience - maybe those people, people who won't talk to rednecks, or if they're rednecks won't talk to intellectuals, people who're afraid to get their shoes muddy or their noses wet, afraid to eat what they crave, afraid to drink Mexican water, afraid to bet a long shot to win, afraid to hitchhike, jaywalk, honky-tonk, cogitate, osculate, levitate, rock it, bop it, sock it, or bark at the moon, maybe such people are simply inauthentic, and maybe the jacklet humanist who says differently is due to have his tongue fried on the hot slabs of Liar's Hell. Some folks hide, and some folk's seek, and seeking, when it's mindless, neurotic, desperate, or pusillanimous can be a form of hiding. But there are folks who want to know and aren't afraid to look and won't turn tail should they find it - and if they never do, they'll have a good time anyway because nothing, neither the terrible truth nor the absence of it, is going to cheat them out of one honest breath of Earth's sweet gas.”
― Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker


“Don't let yourself be victimized by the age you live in. It's not the
times that will bring us down, any more than it's society. When you
put the blame on society, then you end up turning to society for the
solution. Just like those poor neurotics at the Care Fest. There's a
tendency today to absolve individuals of moral responsiblity and treat
them as victims of social circumstance. You buy that, you pay with
your soul. It's not men who limit women, it's not straights who limit
gays, it's not whites who limit black. what limits people is lack of
character. What limites people is that they don't have the fucking
nerve or imagination to star in their own movie, let alone direct it.
Yuck....It's a wonderful time to be alive. As long as one has enough
dynamite. --pg. 116-117”
― Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker

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