Tom Robbins Quotes About Books

Quotes about: Books

• Sometimes, though, I feel that pushing books is a whole lot like pushing medicine. Think of books as pills. I have pills that cure ignorance and pills that cure boredom. I have pills to elevate moods and pills to open people's eyes to the awful truth: uppers and downers as they were. I sell pills to help people find themselves and pills to help them lose themselves when they require escape from the pressures and anxieties of life in a complex society.

  Tom Robbins

  Book, Ignorance, Eye

  Tom Robbins (2003). “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues”, p.86, Bantam

• A book no more contains reality than a clock contains time. A book may measure so-called reality as a clock measures so-called time; a book may create an illusion of reality as a clock creates an illusion of time; a book may be real, just as a clock is real (both more real, perhaps, than those ideas to which they allude); but let's not kid ourselves - all a clock contains is wheels and springs and all a book contains is sentences.

  Tom Robbins

  Spring, Real, Book

  Tom Robbins (2003). “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues”, p.121, Bantam

• The female characters in my books tend to be independent, frisky, spunky, witty, emotionally strong, erotically daring, spiritually oriented and intellectually generous; in short, the kind of women I admire in real life.

  Tom Robbins

  Witty, Strong, Real

• Laws, it is said, are for the protection of the people. It's unfortunate that there are no statistics on the number of lives that are clobbered yearly as a result of laws: outmoded laws; laws that found their way onto the books as a result of ignorance, hysteria or political haymaking; antilife laws; biased laws; laws that pretend that reality is fixed and nature is definable; laws that deny people the right to refuse protection. A survey such as that could keep a dozen dull sociologists out of mischief for months.

  Tom Robbins

  Book, Ignorance, Reality

• There were no mail-order catalogues in 1492. Marco Polo's journal was the wish book of Renaissance Europe. Then, Columbus sailed the ocean blue and landed in Sears' basement. Despite all the Indians on the escalator, Columbus' visit came to be known as a "discovery.

  Tom Robbins

  Ocean, Book, Blue

  Tom Robbins (2003). “Another Roadside Attraction”, p.254, Bantam

• almost any object, including this book you hold, can turn up as Exhibit A in a murder trial.

  Tom Robbins

  Book, Trials, Murder

  Tom Robbins (2003). “Still Life with Woodpecker”, p.80, Bantam

• I would only read the novels that people classify as 'beach books' if I were being held prisoner and the only alternative was the 'Book of Mormon.'

  Tom Robbins

  Beach, Book, People

• I don't have a very high opinion, actually, of the world of criticism - or the practice of criticism. I think I admire art criticism, criticism of painting and sculpture, far more than I do that of say films and books, literary or film criticism. But I don't much like the practice. I think there are an awful lot of bad people in it.

  Tom Robbins

  Art, Book, Thinking

• If the novelist isn't surprised by where his book ends up, he or she probably hasn't written anything worth remembering.

  Tom Robbins

  Book, Novelists, Remember

• If you want to make a name for yourself, the oldest trick in the book is to attack what everybody else reveres.

  Tom Robbins

  Book, Names, Want

  "Oral history interview with Tom Robbins". Interview with Martha Kingsbury, www.aaa.si.edu. March 3, 1984.

• One of my books is a hallucinogen, an aphrodisiac, a mood elevator, an intellectual garage door opener, and a metaphysical trash compactor. They'll do everything except rotate your tires.

  Tom Robbins

  Book, Doors, Intellectual

• I never outline. I don't work from an outline. I have no idea where the book is going. I mean, even two-thirds of the way through, I don't know how it's going to end.

  Tom Robbins

  Book, Mean, Ideas

• I finish the book so I can see how it's going to end. I write that first sentence, and if it's the right first sentence, it leads to the right second sentence and three years later you have a 500-page manuscript, but it really is like going on a trip, going on a journey. It's a voyage.

  Tom Robbins

  Book, Writing, Journey

• Whenever I finish a book, I go off and have some kind of adventure. Having had an adventure in my writing chair or on my writing sofa, an internal adventure, then I need to balance that off with an external adventure, so I'll go tramping through Africa or whitewater rafting or float to Hawaii in a martini shaker or something.

  Tom Robbins

  Book, Adventure, Writing

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