Tom Robbins Quotes

Under trees, the urban dweller might restore his troubled soul and find the blessing of a creative pause.

Cities produce in me melancholy or a tension I don't need.

I've got to be by trees, otherwise I get claustrophobic.

The smartest thing I ever did as a writer was hire a retired conservation agent to blaze a hiking trail for me. It's nothing fancy - just a narrow path that meanders for a little over a mile through the woods near my home. But that trail through the trees has become my therapist, my personal trainer, and my best editor.

Time spent in nature is the most cost-effective and powerful way to counteract the burnout and sort of depression that we feel when we sit in front of a computer all day.

It's either I have to be in the trees or in the ocean, otherwise I lose my mind. I have to get connected with nature, otherwise I don't feel very good. And that's what life's about, feeling good, so nature knows best for me.

A large body of literature suggests that wellbeing is intimately linked to attachment - not only to other people, but also to the natural world.

Even in those cities which seem to enjoy the blessings of peace, and where the arts florish, the inhabitants are devoured by envy, cares and anxieties, which are greater plagues than any expirienced in a town when it is under siege.

For myself, the Creek satisfies a thing that had gone hungry and unfed since childhood days. I am often lonely. Who is not? But I should be lonelier in the heart of a city.

To the body and mind which have been cramped by noxious work or company, nature is medicinal and restores their tone. The tradesman, the attorney comes out of the din and craft of the street and sees the sky and the woods, and is a man again. In their eternal calm, he finds himself.

I live not in myself, but I become Portion of that around me: and to me High mountains are a feeling, but the hum of human cities torture.

Me? I was lost for long time. I didn’t make any friends for few years. You can say I made friends with two trees, two big trees in the middle of the school […]. I spent all my free time up in those trees. Everyone called me Tree Boy for the longest time. […]. I preferred trees to people. After that I preferred pigeons, but it was trees first.

The confined air of a metropolis is hurtful to the minds and bodies of those who have never lived out of it. It is impure, stagnant--without breathing-space to allow a larger view of ourselves or others--and gives birth to a puny, sickly, unwholesome, and degenerate race of beings.

If at all possible, commune with nature daily.

One means of sanity is to retain a hold on the natural world, ... Americans still have that chance, more than many peoples.

We should be worrying about if you live in the city you're more likely to have anxiety or mood disorders and to be schizophrenic. More than the problems people have from social media.

Reconnection to the natural world is fundamental to human health, well-being, spirit, and survival.

One of the reasons there may be a trend toward moving out of the cities, again, it may be conscious or it may be unconscious, but it is a desire to connect more with nature. And with the natural rhythms. We [people] need that! We've been missing it.

You must converse much with the field and the woods if you would imbibe such health into your mind and spirit as you covet for your body

Every few years when it's been another five years that have passed and I haven't made a film and the depression starts taking over totally, I allow myself to do a commercial. And then I feel really dirty and get to work promptly.

It would be a nice place if you took all the people out of the city.

It has affected me very much in the last 10 years. I get it from my grandmother. She was very superstitious as well. I'm funny about numbers. It's become a phobia, so I have to watch it. It affects your day a lot. Before I go on stage, there are certain things I do that are semi-sort of Gypsy superstitious things, but I'm coping with them. It hasn't affected the music, thank God. If you got really bad, you'd say "I'll pick that note instead of that one or sing this song before that.

Twenty years ago I might have hired a professional listener, but somewhere along the way I had lost faith in the talking cure. A genteel fraud in my view.

Many years later, a psychiatrist friend of mine said something to us. He said, "Respect denial." It's a powerful force.

I've got many, many demons that affect me on many, many levels. A few years ago, I was convinced of that - I thought I truly was possessed by the devil. I remember sitting through the Exorcist a dozen times, saying to myself, 'Yeah, I can relate to that. I really wish I knew why I've done some of the things I've done over the years. I don't know if I'm a medium for some outside source. Whatever it is, frankly, I hope it's not what I think it is - Satan.”