Tom Robbins Quotes

Fiction has a unique role in conveying Truth. In fact, only fiction that is Truth with a capital T is worthwhile.

People are not likely to lie on the Internet about the atomic number of Rubidium, but they will lie about history.

I think, like, fiction has a place to understand those things that are hardest to understand that non-fiction can't ever get at.

The highest ensign that men ever met and embraced under, the Cross itself, had no meaning save an accidental extrinsic one.

A lotta Christians wear crosses 'round their necks; do you think if Jesus comes back he ever wants to see another cross?

In the world of physics we watch a shadowgraph performance of the drama of familiar life. The shadow of my elbow rests on the shadow table as the shadow ink flows over the shadow paper. It is all symbolic, and as a symbol the physicist leaves it. ... The frank realisation that physical science is concerned with a world of shadows is one of the most significant of recent advances.

The ultimate arbiter of truth is experiment, not the comfort one derives from one's a priori beliefs, nor the beauty or elegance one ascribes to one's theoretical models.

A myth is a lie that conveys a truth.

Fiction to me is a kind of parable. You have got to make up your mind it's not true. Some kind of truth emerges from it, but it's not fact.

The Christian icon is not the Stars and Stripes but a cross-flag, and its emblem is not a donkey, an elephant, or an eagle, but a slaughtered lamb.

A powerful enough metaphor grows its own truth.

I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence.

The real truth, I thought, in terms of what faith is and what Christianity is.

Absolute truth is not dependent upon public opinion or popularity. Now what is this truth? It is His gospel. It is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The world is looking, not for Christians who are perfect, but for Christians who are honest and who are willing to be honest with some of our contradictions and hypocrisy.

Fiction is Truth's elder sister. Obviously. No one in the world knew what truth was till some one had told a story.

Enormous numbers of people are taken in, or at least beguiled and fascinated, by what seems to me to be unbelievable hocum, and relatively few are concerned with or thrilled by the astounding-yet true-facts of science, as put forth in the pages of, say, Scientific American.

No man is a Christian who cheats his fellows, perverts the truth, or speaks of a "clean bomb" yet he will be the first to make public his faith in God.

Just because something is a metaphor doesn't mean it can't be real.

Every great literature has always been allegorical - allegorical of some view of the whole universe. The 'Iliad' is only great because all life is a battle, the 'Odyssey' because all life is a journey, the Book of Job because all life is a riddle.

Jewish authors would never have invented either that style nor that morality; and the Gospel has marks of truth so great, so striking, so utterly inimitable, that the invention of it would be more astonishing than the hero.

In the contexts of religion and politics, words are not regarded as standing, rather inadequately, for things and events; on the contrary things and events are regarded as particular illustrations of words.

Christianity is realistic because it says that if there is no truth, there is also no hope; and there can be no truth if there is no adequate base. It is prepared to face the consequences of being proved false and say with Paul: If you find the body of Christ, the discussion is finished, let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die. It leaves absolutely no room for a romantic answer.

It should be carefully noted that Jesus did not say, "I am one of the equally good ways" or "I am a better way than the others, I am an aspect of truth; I am a fragment of the life." Instead, His claim was absolute, and allegiance to Him as the Savior of the world, was to take precedence over all the claims of men and religions.

A wonder tale can be truer than true," I said. I had learned (...) that the deepest kind of truth can be found in the strangest and wildest of stories. One may not meet a fire-breathing dragon on the way to the well. One may not encounter an army of toothed snakes in the woodshed. That does not make the wisdom in those tales any less real.