We pay just as dearly for our triumphs as we do for our defeats. Go ahead and fail. But fail with wit, fail with grace, fail with style. A mediocre failure is as insufferable as a mediocre success. Embrace failure! Seek it out. Learn to love it. That may be the only way any of us will ever be free.
Tom Robbins (b. 1932) American novelist
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1976)
Quotations by:
Robbins, Tom
The Devil doesn’t make us do anything. The Devil, for example, doesn’t make us mean. Rather, when we’re mean, we make the Devil. Literally. Our actions create him. Conversely, when we behave with compassion, generosity, and grace, we create God in the world.
Tom Robbins (b. 1932) American novelist
Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates (2000)
In the end, we should simply imagine a joke; a long joke that’s being continually retold in an accent too thick and too strange to ever be completely understood. Life is that joke. The soul is its punchline.
Tom Robbins (b. 1932) American novelist
Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates (2000)
There’s birth, there’s death, and in between there’s maintenance.
Tom Robbins (b. 1932) American novelist
Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates (2000)
Your friend insults the homeless by giving them no credit for having made the decisions that shaped their lives, and demeans them further by declaring them powerless to alter their situations. There’re many ways, my dear, to victimize people. The most insidious way is to persuade them that they’re victims.
Tom Robbins (b. 1932) American novelist
Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas (1994)
Of the seven dwarves only Dopey had a shaven face. This should tell us something about the custom of shaving.
Tom Robbins (b. 1932) American novelist
Skinny Legs and All (1990)
There are only two mantras… yum and yuk. Mine is yum.
Tom Robbins (b. 1932) American novelist
Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)
When we’re incomplete, we’re always searching for somebody to complete us. When, after a few years or a few months of a relationship, we find that we’re still unfulfilled, we blame our partners and take up with somebody more promising. This can go on and on — series polygamy — until we admit that while a partner can add sweet dimension to our lives, we, each of us, are responsible for our own fulfillment. Nobody else can provide it for us, and to believe otherwise is to delude ourselves dangerously and to program for eventual failure every relationship we enter.
Tom Robbins (b. 1932) American novelist
Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)
We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love.
Tom Robbins (b. 1932) American novelist
Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)
Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature.