Billy > Billy's Quotes

“And don’t try to make yourself an extended family out of ghosts on the Internet.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, If This Isn't Nice, What Is?: Advice for the Young

“Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I’ve said before, bugs in amber.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“The lesson was the same: This program is subject to change -- often unexpectedly, sometimes in the batting of an eye. It’s the best argument I know against suicide.”
― Tom Robbins, Tibetan Peach Pie: A True Account of an Imaginative Life

“You should never hesitate to trade your cow for a handful of magic beans.”
― Tom Robbins

“The highest function of love is that it makes the loved one a unique and irreplaceable being.”
― Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

“...disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business....”
― Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

“There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan

“Live simply so that others may simply live.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“Sons of suicides seldom do well.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

“Seems like the only kind of job an American can get these days is committing suicide in some way.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

“The public health authorities never mention the main reason many Americans have for smoking heavily, which is that smoking is a fairly sure, fairly honorable form of suicide.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Welcome to the Monkey House

“I still believe that peace and plenty and happiness can be worked out some way. I am a fool.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Jailbird

“If you can do no good, at least do no harm.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!

“Death is simple. Life is messy. Give me life, the more complicated the better.”
― Tom Robbins

“Sons of suicides seldom do well. Characteristically, they find life lacking a certain zing. They tend to feel more rootless than most, even in a notoriously rootless nation. They are squeamishly incurious about the past and numbly certain about the future to this grisly extent: they suspect that they, too, will kill themselves.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

“Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night

“- Why me?
- That is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?
- Yes.
- Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Slaughterhouse-Five

“Our lives are not as limited as we think they are; the world is a wonderfully weird place; consensual reality is significantly flawed; no institution can be trusted, but love does work; all things are possible; and we all could be happy and fulfilled if we only had the guts to be truly free and the wisdom to shrink our egos and quit taking ourselves so damn seriously.”
― Tom Robbins

“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.”
― Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

“Love easily confuses us because it is always in flux between illusion and substance, between memory and wish, between contentment and need.”
― Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

“Albert Camus wrote that the only serious question is whether to kill yourself or not.
Tom Robbins wrote that the only serious question is whether time has a beginning and an end.
Camus clearly got up on the wrong side of bed, and Robbins must have forgotten to set the alarm.
There is only one serious question. And that is: Who knows how to make love stay?
Answer me that and I will tell you whether or not to kill yourself.”
― Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker

“To achieve the impossible, it is precisely the unthinkable that must be thought.”
― Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

“Funny how we think of romance as always involving two, when the romance of solitude can be ever so much more delicious and intense.”
― Tom Robbins

“Among our egocentric sad-sacks, despair is as addictive as heroin and more popular than sex, for the single reason that when one is unhappy one gets to pay a lot of attention to oneself. Misery becomes a kind of emotional masturbation.”
― Tom Robbins, Wild Ducks Flying Backward

“The only bubble in the flat champagne of February is Valentine’s Day. It was no accident that our ancestors pinned Valentine’s Day on February’s shirt: he or she lucky enough to have a lover in frigid, antsy February has cause for celebration, indeed.”
― Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

“To live fully, one must be free, but to be free one must give up security. Therefore, to live one must be ready to die. How's that for a paradox?”
― Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

“It is better to be small, colorful, sexy, careless, and peaceful, like the flowers, than large, conservative, repressed, fearful, and aggressive, like the thunder lizards; a lesson, by the way, that the Earth has yet to learn.”
― Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

“There is plenty of misery in the world, all right, but there is ample pleasure, as well. If a person forswears pleasure in order to avoid misery, what has he gained?...how can you admire a human who consciously embraces the bland, the mediocre, and the safe rather than risk the suffering that disappointments can bring?...If desire causes suffering, it may be because we do not desire wisely, or that we are inexpert at obtaining what we desire...why not get better at fulfilling desire? I cannot believe that the most delicious things were placed here merely to test us, to tempt us, to make it the more difficult for us to achieve the grand prize - they safety of the void. To fashion of life such a petty game is unworthy of both men and gods.”
― Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

“In the end, perhaps we should simply imagine a joke; a long joke that's continually retold in an accent too thick and strange to ever be completely understood. Life is that joke my friends. The soul is the punch line.”
― Tom Robbins

“Minds were made for blowing.”
― Tom Robbins, Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas