Tom Robbins Quotes

I often think I am a better person because I lived for many years of my life with a flashlight. I have developed skills I did not think were possible - bathing with a cup of water by candlelight, for instance, and writing a story with a headlamp on.

I grew up learning to do more with less.

Since I was younger I've been making the best out of nothing.

The reason for this project comes from my childhood, that is clear to me. I did not have any toys. So, I played in the bricks of ruined buildings around me and with which I built houses.

From the time I got dressed in the back of a deflated, flat-tired, fish-smelling station wagon for Rocky. It's always been do it yourself, kind of like paper-clip it together.

When you grow up starving, you cannot point with pride to a book you've just spent six hours reading. Picking cotton, sewing flour bags into clothes - those were the skills my father grew up appreciating.

One day, my bike tire broke miles from home and I found a way to fix it. That's what I learned: Even if you don't have all the tools, you can improvise.

It's amazing how resourceful you can become when you're in the middle of the ocean and there's only one way to get to the other side.

Lots of ingenuity gets you through times with no money better than money gets you through times of no ingenuity.

Most people, it seems, think that Robinson Crusoe when he landed on his Island had nothing to keep him from starvation or anything else. As a matter of fact he had twelve raft loads of supplies that he took off the wrecked ship. He had as much food and furniture as if he had had a delicatessen store and Fifth Avenue outside his hut.

One of the most important things a person can learn to do is to make something out of whatever he or she happens to have at the moment.

If we had time and no money, living by our wits, what story would you tell?

Style has a profound meaning to Black Americans. If we can’t drive, we will invent walks and the world will envy the dexterity of our feet. If we can’t have ham, we will boil chitterlings; if we are given rotten peaches, we will make cobblers; if given scraps, we will make quilts; take away our drums, and we will clap our hands. We prove the human spirit will prevail. We will take what we have to make what we need. We need confidence in our knowledge of who we are.

My mother could make something out of nothing - and everything started from scratch.

You know how people love to glamorize poverty? There's nothing glamorous about it. But it did make me really creative. Those days, I was literally taking t-shirts in the day and sewing them back together to make dresses for the night.

When I first came out, I was a film student, and my mom sewed clothes. I was already doing a million things then, whatever it took to survive. If I had to braid someone's hair to get one pound for my lunch money, that's what I did.

Out of economic hardship can come change - we are suddenly cast onto our wits and our talents and our resources and our strengths, as we lose all the choices we once had.

But I love the idea - whether it's in my work or where I live - exploring new frontier, and I like putting myself in strange places and trying to survive and figure things out and gather up an infrastructure. I like knowing that I could figure out a way to live anywhere.

Often I had to imagine the things I needed. I learned very early to read amidst noise. And so I started writing and drawing at an early age.

People never knew we were poor, but out of that poverty came the most incredible inventions - board games, recipes... we never stopped inventing.

Living in a small town, one of the keys to survival was your imagination.

My life has always been chaotic. From the time I got dressed in the back of a deflated, flat-tired, fish-smelling station wagon for Rocky. It's always been do it yourself, kind of like paper-clip it together.

I do have a side of me that would just love to be stuck in the woods and have to stick it out and be really resourceful.

I'll dispose of my teeth as I see fit, and after they've gone, I'll get along. I started off living on gruel, and by God, I can always go back to it again.

My father, who was a hair colourist, died when I was young, so my mother had to work very hard. But at the same time, I do believe that if you have everything, it is easy to make a dinner. When you only have flour and water and olives and potatoes, you have to be much more creative, and that's what my mother is all about.