Karen > Karen's Quotes

“Let us toast to animal pleasures, to escapism, to rain on the roof and instant coffee, to unemployment insurance and library cards, to absinthe and good-hearted landlords, to music and warm bodies and contraceptives... and to the "good life", whatever it is and wherever it happens to be.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman

“Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult ―once we truly understand and accept it― then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.”
― M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth

“The minute you land in New Orleans, something wet and dark leaps on you and starts humping you like a swamp dog in heat, and the only way to get that aspect of New Orleans off you is to eat it off. That means beignets and crayfish bisque and jambalaya, it means shrimp remoulade, pecan pie, and red beans with rice, it means elegant pompano au papillote, funky file z'herbes, and raw oysters by the dozen, it means grillades for breakfast, a po' boy with chowchow at bedtime, and tubs of gumbo in between. It is not unusual for a visitor to the city to gain fifteen pounds in a week--yet the alternative is a whole lot worse. If you don't eat day and night, if you don't constantly funnel the indigenous flavors into your bloodstream, then the mystery beast will go right on humping you, and you will feel its sordid presence rubbing against you long after you have left town. In fact, like any sex offender, it can leave permanent psychological scars.”
― Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

“Perhaps I was being picky, but I really didn’t think being able to spell orgasm without being spotted a vowel was asking too much.”
― Summer Daniels, Summer's Journey: Volume One - Losing Control

“... I had been brought to boil twice with no pasta.”
― Vanessa Estrella, Nasti's Beauty Salon

“Love easily confuses us because it is always in flux between illusion and substance, between memory and wish, between contentment and need.”
― Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

“Our individuality is all, all, that we have. There are those who barter it for security, those who repress it for what they believe is the betterment of the whole society, but blessed in the twinkle of the morning star is the one who nurtures it and rides it in, in grace and love and wit, from peculiar station to peculiar station along life's bittersweet route.”
― Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

“There are only two mantras, yum and yuck, mine is yum.”
― Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker

“Curiosity, especially intellectual inquisitiveness, is what separates the truly alive from those who are merely going through the motions.”
― Tom Robbins

“The world is a wonderfully weird place, consensual reality is significantly flawed, no institution can be trusted, certainty is a mirage, security a delusion, and the tyranny of the dull mind forever threatens -- but our lives are not as limited as we think they are, all things are possible, laughter is holier than piety, freedom is sweeter than fame, and in the end it's love and love alone that really matters.”
― Tom Robbins

“Don't trust anybody who'd rather be grammatically correct than have a good time.”
― Tom Robbins, Skinny Legs and All

“It is better to be small, colorful, sexy, careless, and peaceful, like the flowers, than large, conservative, repressed, fearful, and aggressive, like the thunder lizards; a lesson, by the way, that the Earth has yet to learn.”
― Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

“Louisiana in September was like an obscene phone call from nature. The air - moist, sultry, secretive, and far from fresh - felt as if it were being exhaled into one's face. Sometimes it even sounded like heavy breathing.”
― Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

“When we accept small wonders, we qualify ourselves to imagine great wonders.”
― Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

“Eating a raw oyster is like french kissing a mermaid.”
― Tom Robbins

“The sky was the color of Edgar Allen Poe's pajamas.”
― Tom Robbins

“Does koala bear poop smell like cough drops?”
― Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

“All a person can do in this life is gather about him his integrity, his imagination, and his individuality – and with these ever with him, out front and in sharp focus, leap into the dance of experience.”
― Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

“Solace? That's why God made fermented beverages and the blues.”
― Tom Robbins, Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates

“They glared at her the way any intelligent persons ought to glare when what they need is a smoke, a bite, a cup of coffee, a piece of ass, or a good fast-paced story, and all they're getting is philosophy.”
― Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker

“People who sacrifice beauty for efficiency get what they deserve. (Bernard Mickey Wrangle, p 99)”
― Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker

“Louisiana in September was like an obscene phone call from nature. The air--moist, sultry, secretive, and far from fresh--felt as if it were being exhaled into one's face. Sometimes it even sounded like heavy breathing. Honeysuckle, swamp flowers, magnolia, and the mystery smell of the river scented the atmosphere, amplifying the intrusion of organic sleaze. It was aphrodisiac and repressive, soft and violent at the same time. In New Orleans, in the French Quarter, miles from the barking lungs of alligators, the air maintained this quality of breath, although here it acquired a tinge of metallic halitosis, due to fumes expelled by tourist buses, trucks delivering Dixie beer, and, on Decatur Street, a mass-transit motor coach named Desire.”
― Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

“If New Orleans is not fully in the mainstream of culture, neither is it fully in the mainstream of time. Lacking a well-defined present, it lives somewhere between its past and its future, as if uncertain whether to advance or to retreat. Perhaps it is its perpetual ambivalence that is its secret charm. Somewhere between Preservation Hall and the Superdome, between voodoo and cybernetics, New Orleans listens eagerly to the seductive promises of the future but keeps at least one foot firmly planted in its history, and in the end, conforms, like an artist, not to the world but to its own inner being--ever mindful of its personal style.”
― Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

“Never be afraid to love, not even when there's a chance you're not being loved in return.”
― Tom Robbins, B Is for Beer: A Philosophical Investigation for Adults and Children into Reality and Beer

“Brilliantly, ecstatically, irrepressibly. This is the way to burn”
― Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker

“I rather like the smell of absurdity in the morning.”
― Tom Robbins, Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates

“Life is like a stew, you have to stir it frequently, or all the scum rises to the top.”
― Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker

“His voice wore no pants.”
― Tom Robbins

“It is more important to be free than to be happy.”
― Tom Robbins

“And who ever said the world was fair, little lady? Maybe death is fair, but certainly not life. We must accept the unfairness as proof of the sublime flux of existence, the capricious music of the universe- and go on about our tasks”
― Tom Robbins, Skinny Legs and All