the red of lies and deals and greed
“[I]n Washington, D.C., . . . the President was having a little hand trouble of his own. Which is to say, the President had been caught red-handed, hands redder than a travel poster sunset, pimp red, a red that could enrage bulls and stop locomotives, but not blood red, for blood is sacred and the red that ran off the President’s hands was the red of lies and deals and greed and arrogant megalomania.”
—Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get The Blues, 1977.
the wildest edge of edges
“If you take any activity, any art, any discipline, any skill, take it and push it as far as it will go, push it beyond where it has ever been before, push it to the wildest edge of edges, then you force it into the realm of magic. And it doesn’t matter what it is that you select, because when it has been pushed far enough it contains everything else. I’m not talking about specialization. To specialize is to brush one tooth. When a person specializes he channels all of his energies through one narrow conduit; he knows one thing extremely well and is ignorant of almost everything else. That’s not it. That’s tame and insular and severely limiting. I’m talking about taking one thing, however trivial and mundane, to such extremes that you illuminate its relationship to all other things, and then taking it a little bit further—to that point of cosmic impact where it becomes all other things.”
—Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get The Blues, 1977.
Literal light
“Buddha and Rama and Lao-tzu brought light into the world. Literal light. Jesus Christ also was a living manifestation of light, although by the time his teachings were exported into the West, Saint Paul had trimmed the wick, and Jesus’ beam grew dimmer and dimmer until, around the fourth century, it went out altogether.”
—Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get The Blues, 1977.
Violet hills and burnt umber buttes
“Violet hills and burnt umber buttes rested in their still American places like novels on Zane Grey’s bookshelf.”
—Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get The Blues, 1977.
rosy-fingered dawn
“Homer referred in The Odyssey to “rosy-fingered dawn.” Homer, who was blind and had no editor, referred over and over again to “rosy-fingered dawn.” Pretty soon, dawn began to think of herself as rosy-fingered: the old doctrine of life imitating art.”
—Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get The Blues, 1977.
Difficulties
“Difficulties illuminate existence, but they must be fresh and of high quality.”
—Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get The Blues, 1977.
two rainbows daily
“Nigi is Japanese for “rainbow.” It also means “two o’clock.” Thus, in Japan there are at least two rainbows daily.”
—Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get The Blues, 1977.
The brown paper bag
“The brown paper bag is the only thing civilized man has produced that does not seem out of place in nature.”
—Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get The Blues, 1977.
a clown’s head
“The moon looked like a clown’s head dipped in honey.
It bobbed ballishly in the sky, dripping a mixture of clown white and bee jelly onto the Dakota hills.”
—Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get The Blues, 1977.
the lair of a palm-reader
“It was simple to recognize the lair of a palm-reader. Outside her trailer or bungalow there would be a sign on which a silhouette of the human hand, wrist to fingertips, palm outward, was painted in red. Always in red. For some reason, and for all the author knows there may be a tradition here whose origins stretch back to the Gypsies of Chaldea, it would have been less surprising to find flesh-colored tights in General Patton’s laundry bag than to find a flesh-colored hand on a palmistry sign near Richmond.”
—Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get The Blues, 1977.