Christians, and some Jews, claim we're in the "end times," but they've been saying this off and on for more than two thousand years. According to Hindu cosmology, we're in the kali yuga, a dark period when the cow of history is balanced precariously on one leg, soon to topple. Then there are our new-age friends who believe that this December we're in for a global cage-rattling which, once the dust has settled, will usher in a great spiritual awakening. Most of this apocalyptic noise appears to be just wishful thinking on the part of people who find life too messy and uncertain for comfort, let alone for serenity and mirth. The truth, from my perspective, is that the world, indeed, is ending -- and is also being reborn. It's been doing that all day, every day, forever. Each time we exhale, the world ends; when we inhale, there can be, if we allow it, rebirth and spiritual renewal. It all transpires inside of us. In our consciousness, in our hearts. All the time.

Love is dope, not chicken soup.

I'm descended from a long line of preachers and policemen. Now, it's common knowledge that cops are congenital liars, and evangelists spend their lives telling fantastic tales in such a way as to convince otherwise rational people that they're factual. So, I guess I come by my narrative inclinations naturally.

You may tell the greatest lies and wear a brilliant disguise, but you can't escape the eyes of the one who sees right through you.

Midnight, when the monotonous tick-tock of diurnal progress is for one throbbing moment replaced by the cool but smokey honk of a saxophone, alternately seductive and threatening. Midnight. The black growth on the clock face that has to be biopsied every twenty-four hours to see whether it is malignant or benign.

I like rain. I like bad weather. I'm a fan of bad weather. Hurricanes. Blizzards. I love to see mother nature do her stuff.

People of zee wurl, Relax!

To achieve the impossible, it is precisely the unthinkable that must be thought.

There are only two mantras ... yum and yuk. Mine is yum.

The highest function of love is that it makes the loved one a unique and irreplaceable being.

Birth and death were easy. It was life that was hard.

Of the seven deadly sins, lust is definitely the pick of the litter.

When two people meet and fall in love, there's a sudden rush of magic. Magic is just naturally present then. We tend to feed on that gratuitous magic without striving to make any more. One day we wake up and find that the magic is gone. We hustle to get it back, but by then it's usually too late, we've used it up. What we have to do is work like hell at making additional magic right from the start. It's hard work, but if we can remember to do it, we greatly improve our chances of making love stay.

Religion is not merely the opium of the masses, it's the cyanide.

The Middle Ages hangs over history's belt like a beer belly. It is too late now for aerobic dancing or cottage cheese lunches to reduce the Middle Ages. History will have to wear size 48 shorts forever.

If you're honest, you sooner or later have to confront your values. Then you're forced to separate what is right from what is merely legal. This puts you metaphysically on the run. America is full of metaphysical outlaws.

The first time that she spread her legs for him it had been like opening her jaws for the dentist.

So you think that you're a failure, do you? Well, you probably are. What's wrong with that? In the first place, if you've any sense at all you must have learned by now that 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.

There's birth, there's death, and in between there's maintenance.

What I'm saying is simply that every totalitarian society, no matter how strict, has had its underground. In fact, two undergrounds. There's the underground involved in political resistance and the underground involved in preserving beauty and fun--which is to say, preserving the human spirit.

TOM ROBBINS, Still Life with Woodpecker

Are you aware that rushing toward a goal is a sublimated death wish? It's no coincidence we call them 'deadlines'.

Accept that you're a pimple and try to keep a lively sense of humor about it. That way lies grace — and maybe even glory.

The reason I write so slowly is because I try never to leave a sentence until it's as perfect as I can make it. So there isn't a word in any of my books that hasn't been gone over 40 times.

When a culture is being dumbed down as effectively as ours is, its narrative arts (literature, film, theatre) seem to vacillate between the brutal and the bland, sometimes in the same work. The pervasive brutality in current fiction -- the death, disease, dysfunction, depression, dismemberment, drug addiction, dementia, and dreary little dramas of domestic discord -- is an obvious example of how language in exploitative, cynical or simply neurotic hands can add to the weariness, the darkness in the world. Less apparent is that bland writing -- timid, antiseptic, vanilla writing -- is nearly as unhealthy as the brutal and dark. Instead of sipping, say, elixir, nectar, tequila, or champagne, the reader is invited to slurp lumpy milk or choke on the author's dust bunnies.

The unhappy person resents it when you try to cheer him up, because that means he has to stop dwelling on himself and start paying attention to the universe. Unhappiness is the ultimate form of self-indulgence. When you're unhappy, you get to pay a lot of attention to yourself. You get to take yourself oh so very seriously.

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.

Every month when the moon is full, I'm driven to balance my checkbook and straighten up my apartment. I can't help myself. Instead of a werewolf I turn into an accountant.

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.

If you fail to pilot your own ship, don't be surprised at what inappropiate port you find yourself docked.

I'll never write another novel on an electric typewriter. I'd rather use a sharp stick and a little pile of dogshit.

To emphasize the afterlife is to deny life. To concentrate on heaven is to create hell.

Something has got to hold it together. I'm saying my prayers to Elmer, the Greek god of glue.

A sense of humor, properly developed, is superior to any religion so far devised.