Moonwatching
“Most of the troupers were rolling their own ecstasy now. Dancing. Singing. Climbing trees. Moonwatching (it was mango orange and as thin as a tortilla).”
–Tom Robbins, from Another Roadside Attraction, 1971.
turn immediately to the end of the book
“For those of you who may have come to these pages in the course of a scholastic assignment and are impatient for information to relay to your professor (who, unless he is a total dolt, has it simmering in his brainpan already), the author suggests that you turn immediately to the end of the book and roust out those facts which seem necessary to your cause. Of course, should you do so, you will grow up half-educated and will likely suffer spiritual and sexual deprivations. But it is your decision.”
—Tom Robbins, from Another Roadside Attraction, 1971.
style
“‘The most important thing in life is style. That is, the style of one’s existence—the characteristic mode of one’s actions—is basically, ultimately what matters. For if man defines himself by doing, then style is doubly definitive because style describes the doing.’”
—Tom Robbins, from Another Roadside Attraction, 1971.
the language of the Dream Wheel
“‘We breakfast at the All-Night Sanskrit Clinic and Sunshine Post. Phosphorescent toadstools illuminate the musicians. Ghost cookies sparkle with opium. We learn the language of the Dream Wheel.’”
—Tom Robbins, from Another Roadside Attraction, 1971.
a green sunset
“It was a green sunset. The reds, the oranges, the purples which Amanda automatically associated with sunsets had been snuffed out in the soggy cloud pile, and the nearly invisible sun that sank—beyond the fields, sloughs, rock islands and tide flats—into Puget Sound, it looked like an unripe olive photographed through gauze.”
—Tom Robbins, from Another Roadside Attraction, 1971.
both black and bright
“[Y]et even the tortoise, dark and melancholy as it is upon the back, still possesses a bright side; its calapee or breast-plate being sometimes of a faint yellowish or golden tinge. . . . The tortoise is both black and bright.”
—Herman Melville, from The Encantadas, a description of those islands also known as The Galapagos; 1854.
fairy fish
“Below the waterline, the rock seemed one honey-comb of grottoes, affording labyrinthine lurking places for swarms of fairy fish. . . . Here hues were seen as yet unpainted, and figures which are unengraved.”
—Herman Melville, from The Encantadas, 1854.
dazzling with scarlet
“She saw all the glories of the camp—its tents stretched forth in beauteous uniformity of lines, crowded with the young and the gay, and dazzling with scarlet; and, to complete the view, she saw herself seated beneath a tent, tenderly flirting with at least six officers at once.”
—Jane Austen, from Pride and Prejudice, 1813.
Both changed color
“Both changed color, one looked white, the other red.”
—Jane Austen, from Pride and Prejudice, 1813.
black-letter text
“In short, to the Spaniard’s black-letter text, it was best, for a while, to leave open margin.”
—Herman Melville, from Benito Cereno, 1855.