[MD] bouquets

[John Carl]

So I found this great site full of Tom Robbins Quotes, and I gathered them
for proper dispersal to the deserving parties:




For Horse,

I can only hope that, upon learning of my imminent execution, Good
Samaritans in Colorado will be moved to ship me a plump love apple from
their backyard patch - and should they happen to be friendly with Hunter S.
Thompson, perhaps persuade him to inject it with a little something
beforehand. Hunter will know just what I mean, and trust me, it won't affect
the taste of the tomato.*


*When I wrote those lines, Thompson was alive and blooming. Now, with his
sad demise, still more color has faded out of the American scene. Where are
the men today whose lives are not beige; where are the writers whose style
is not gray?"


For Platt and Ham,

"Conservatives understand Halloween, liberals only understand Christmas. If
you want to control a population, don't give it social services, give it a
scary adversary."


"The rich are the most discriminated-against minority in the world. Openly
or covertly, everybody hates the rich because, openly or covertly, everybody
envies the rich. Me, I love the rich. Somebody has to love them. Sure, a lot
o’ rich people are assholes, but believe me, a lot o’ poor people are
assholes, too, and an asshole with money can at least pay for his own
drinks."


"As any car freak will tell you, the old models are the most beautiful, even
if they aren't the most efficient. People who sacrifice beauty for
efficiency get what they deserve.’

For Bo,

"Those people who recognise that imagination is reality's master, we call
sages, and those who act upon it, we call artists."

For Mary,

"Three of the four elements are shared by all creatures, but fire was a gift
to humans alone. Smoking cigarettes is as intimate as we can become with
fire without immediate excruciation. Every smoker is an embodiment of
Prometheus, stealing fire from the gods and bringing it on back home. We
smoke to capture the power of the sun, to pacify Hell, to identify with the
primordial spark, to feed on the marrow of the volcano. It's not the tobacco
we're after but the fire. When we smoke, we are performing a version of the
fire dance, a ritual as ancient as lightning.
Does that mean that chain smokers are religious fanatics? You must admit
there's a similarity.

The lung of the smoker is a naked virgin thrown as a sacrifice into the
godfire."


For Krimel,

"Just because you're naked doesn't mean you're sexy. Just because you're
cynical doesn't mean you're cool."

For Lu,

"Whenever a state or an individual cited 'insufficient funds' as an excuse
for neglecting this important thing or that, it was indicative of the extent
to which reality had been distorted by the abstract lens of wealth. During
periods of so-called economic depression, for example, societies suffered
for want of all manner of essential goods, yet investigation almost
invariably disclosed that there were plenty of goods available. Plenty of
coal in the ground, corn in the fields, wool on the sheep. What was missing
was not materials but an abstract unit of measurement called 'money.' It was
akin to a starving woman with a sweet tooth lamenting that she couldn't bake
a cake because she didn't have any ounces. She had butter, flour, eggs,
milk, and sugar, she just didn't have any ounces, any pinches, any pints.
The loony legacy of money was that the arithmetic by which things were
measured had become more valuable than the things themselves."

For Arlo,

"To the extent that this world surrenders its richness and diversity, it
surrenders its poetry; to the extent that it relinquishes its capacity to
surprise, it relinquishes its music; to the extent that it loses its ability
to tolerate ridiculous and even dangerous exceptions, it loses its grace."

For Ian,

"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-kootchy 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 jackleg humanist who says differently is due to have his
tongue fried on the hot slabs of Liar's Hell. Some folks hide, and some
folks 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."



For Ron,


"Our purpose is to consciously, deliberately evolve toward a wiser, more
liberated and luminous state of being; to return to Eden, make friends with
the snake, and set up our computers among the wild apple trees. Deep down,
all of us are probably aware that some kind of mystical evolution - a
melding into the godhead, into love - is our true task. Yet we suppress the
notion with considerable force because to admit it is to acknowledge that
most of our political gyrations, religious dogmas, social ambitions and
financial ploys are not merely counterproductive but trivial. Our mission is
to jettison those pointless preoccupations and take on once again the
primordial cargo of inexhaustible ecstasy.

 Or, barring that, to turn out a good thin-crust pizza and a strong glass of
beer. "


For myself,


"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."



For All,

"They glared at him  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 philosophical aphorisms."