For most people, self-awareness and self-pity blossom simultaneously in early adolescence. It's about that time that we start viewing the world as something other than a whoop-de-doo playground, we start to experience personally how threatening it can be, how cruel and unjust. At the very moment when we become, for the first time, both introspective and socially conscientious, we receive the bad news that the world, by and large, doesn't give a rat's ass.
Tom RobbinsChristianity is merely a system for turning priestesses into handmaidens, queens into concubines, and goddesses into muses.
Tom RobbinsIn 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.
Tom RobbinsSociety had a crime problem. It hired cops to attack crime. Now society has a cop problem.
Tom RobbinsThe loony legacy of money was that the arithmetic by which things were measured had become more valuable than the things themselves.
Tom RobbinsOur greatest human adventure is the evolution of consciousness. We are in this life to enlarge the soul, liberate the spirit, and light up the brain.
Tom RobbinsTime passed. Art came off the walls and became rituals. Ritual became religion. Religion spawned science. Science led to big business. And big business, if it continues on its present, mindless trajectory, could land those lucky enough to survive its ultimate legacy back into caves again.
Tom Robbins