Tom Robbins Quotes

The unconscious wants to flow into consciousness in order to reach the light, but at the same time it continually thwarts itself, because it would rather remain unconscious. That is to say, God wants to become man, but not quite.

A man is whole only when he takes into account his shadow as well as himself - and what is a man's shadow but his upright astonishment?

I'm talking about intellectually and emotionally challenging, but at the same time it's actually not that challenging. So there's this dichotomy.

The unconscious is not just evil by nature, it is also the source of the highest good: not only dark but also light, not only bestial, semihuman, and demonic but superhuman, spiritual, and, in the classical sense of the word, "divine."

Every man is two men; one is awake in the darkness, the other asleep in the light.

Anything is a temptation to those who dread it.

That’s the thing about life, he knew. There was always a but.

The thing you hate about yourself tends to be the thing that everyone likes about you.

As Carl Jung put it, "In each of us there is another whom we do not know." As Pink Floyd sang, "There's someone in my head, but it's not me."

It is said that the greatest cruelty is drawn from those with the kindest hearts.

He didn’t know where the thought had come from, or what strange corner of his brain had come to that conclusion, because he was quite certain it would be nearly impossible to live with her, but somehow he knew that it wouldn’t be at all difficult to love her.

Life involves maintaining oneself between contradictions that can't be solved by analysis.

I long for solitude and yet I cannot stand it.

One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once, life would collapse. There are simply no definitive answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light.

Usually there is a paradox in what a character wants. A conflict is built deeply within them. And then you put them in motion, throw everything at them until they reveal themselves further.

I screwed up. It's all on me. I know that...All these hiccups I have, they must be for a reason. All this is just a test. I just don't know what the test is yet.

How can both Nics, the loving and considerate and generous one, and the self-obsessed and self-destructive one, be the same person?

How long does it take man to realize that he cannot want what he wants? You have to live in hell to see heaven.

Whatever we refuse to recognize about ourselves has a way of rearing its head and making itself known when we least expect it.

My debts are large, my failures great, my shame secret and heavy; yet I come to ask for my good, I quake in fear lest my prayer be granted.

The World is perfect as it is, including my desire to change it

Success is not a harbor but a voyage with its own perils to the spirit ... The lesson that most of us on this voyage never learn, but can never quite forget, is that to win is sometimes to lose.

The line between him and the enemy had simultaneously blurred and solidified. Somehow, while perhaps it shouldn't have, this thought provided a strange sense of peace.

The Freudians describe the conscious as a small lit area, all white, and the unconscious as a great dark marsh full of monsters. In their view, the monsters reach up, grab you by the ankles, and try to drag you down.

I say I'm not a singer, so that means I can't sing. But - doesn't it?