Skip to content

Quotes from Still Life with Woodpecker — Tom Robbins

1932–2025 United States

← All quotes by Tom Robbins

37 quotes

This stuff's so fine Julius Caesar called for it with his dying breath. 'A toot, Brutus,' is what he said.

Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)

There are essential and inessential insanities. The latter are solar in character, the former are linked to the moon.

Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)

Sharks are the criminals of the sea. Dolphins are the outlaws.

Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)

There is a similarity between juggling and composing on the typewriter. The trick is, when you spill something, make it look like a part of the act.

Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)

"This is the way to burn," the fuse seemed to be saying to the more docile, slow-witted candlewick. "Brilliantly, ecstatically, irrepressibly. This is the way to burn."

Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)

They snuggled closer, and when they were as close as they could get without being behind one another, they commenced to kiss again.

Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)

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

Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)

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

Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)

"Who knows how to make love stay?"

Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)

This baby (the Remington SL3 typewriter) speaks electric Shakespeare at the slightest provocation and will rap out a page and a half if you just look at it hard.

Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)

A rabbi's dog could score pork chops in the streets of Tel Aviv easier than Bernard could acquire tequila in King County Jail.

Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)

He looked at her with that kind of painted-on seriousness that comedians shift into when they get their chance to play Hamlet.

Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)

They'd be no threat to me. I have a black belt in Haiku. And a black vest in the cleaners.

Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)

"I'll follow him to the ends of the earth," she sobbed. Yes, darling. But the earth doesn't have any ends. Columbus fixed that.

Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)

Society had a crime problem. It hired cops to attack crime. Now society has a cop problem.

Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)

It's not men who limit women, it's not straights who limit gays, it's not whites who limit blacks. What limits people is lack of character. What limits people is that they don't have the fucking nerve or imagination to star in their own movie, let alone direct it.

Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)

They glared at her the way any intelligent persons ought to glare when what they need is a smoke, a bite, a cup of coffee, a piece of ass, or a good fast-paced story, and all they're getting is philosophy.

Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Tom Robbins (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.