Tom Spanbauer Quotes & Sayings

The fates lead her who will; who won't they drag. — Tom Spanbauer

All this family shit! Harry said. How can you reinvent your life if the original versions won't leave you alone? — Tom Spanbauer

Have some fun while you wait for the will of heaven. — Tom Spanbauer

Fuck hope and all the tiny little towns, one-horse towns, the one-stoplight towns, three-bars country-music jukebox-magic parquet-towns, pressure-cooker pot-roast frozen-peas bad-coffee married-heterosexual towns, crying-kids-in-the-Oldsmobile-beat-your-kid-in the-Thriftway-aisles towns, one-bank one-service-station Greyhound-Bus-stop-at-the-Pepsi-Cafe towns, two-television towns, Miracle Mile towns, Viv's Double Wide Beauty Salon towns, schizophrenic-mother towns, buy-yourself-a-handgun towns, sister-suicide towns, only-Injun's-a-dead-Injun towns, Catholic-Protestant-Mormon-Baptist religious-right five-churches Republican-trickle-down-to-poverty family-values sexual-abuse pro-life creation-theory NRA towns, nervous-mother rodeo-clown-father those little-town-blues towns. — Tom Spanbauer

I was wounded by a blow of love. — Tom Spanbauer

The universe has always conspired to fuck me up. — Tom Spanbauer

To admit ignorance is the highest knowledge. It is the necessary condition for all learning. — Tom Spanbauer

You're going this way and then shit happens and then you're going that way. — Tom Spanbauer

They're from France, Ruby said, Vogue magazine. They only speak French except for fuck you. — Tom Spanbauer

The key to being a warrior is not to be afraid of who you are. — Tom Spanbauer

There's hundreds of corners on this island, Crystal said. And there are thousands of us. Exiles from the heartland without a heart. Out of the old country, a brand-new tribe, dancing to new tunes around a bucket of fire in a vacant lot. — Tom Spanbauer

God made man because he loves to hear stories, Alessandro said. That's a good story, huh? — Tom Spanbauer

I'm an old Catholic. I don't believe in anything Catholic but I do believe that Catholicism keeps me from committing suicide. One — Tom Spanbauer

Miracles are out there somewhere. You just got to find them. — Tom Spanbauer

Identity is your role in life, the part you play. Individuality is who you are, and who you are is revealed to you if you can get to complete presence. — Tom Spanbauer

Felt good, though, just being what I was. — Tom Spanbauer

Sometimes the world is so beautiful it hurts. — Tom Spanbauer

Life is a mess, Rose said. You can fix the mess human beings make, Rose said, But you can't fix the mess being human is. — Tom Spanbauer

The gods know what's important, what's wrong about you. They know everything. If you go out searching for the Holy Grail, they won't let you find it. — Tom Spanbauer

At our table in the corner by the window, huddled around a flame in a red glass, all of us, body to body to body to body. The touch that proves you're not alone, that someone else is there. — Tom Spanbauer

All daring and courage, I said, All iron endurance of misfortune, make for a finer, nobler type of manhood. — Tom Spanbauer

It's the responsibility of the survivor to tell the story. — Tom Spanbauer

Drop-dead freshly fucked gorgeous. — Tom Spanbauer

I tell you I'm tired of hearing it. There ain't nothing that happens to a person that ain't that person. The world out there only does what you tell it to do. The world is happening to you the way it is happening because you're telling yourself the story that way. If you want to change the world so damn bad, Ida, then where you got to start is how it is you're looking at it. — Tom Spanbauer

Every time you hear a car alarm, Ruby said, another New Yorker has gone to hell. — Tom Spanbauer

LA is the me city, Ruby said, and New York is the you city. In LA it's fuck me. In New York it's fuck you. — Tom Spanbauer

Life is absolutely, mysteriously beautiful. — Tom Spanbauer

Trying to change yourself is as hard as trying to change the universe. Maybe there's no difference. The fact is, shit happens none of us plan on. — Tom Spanbauer

Why else do we live, except to be loved and remembered by those we love? — Tom Spanbauer

So put your costume on, honey! Ruby said. Set Harlequin free! That party monster of yours is screaming to come out. Let the monster out! — Tom Spanbauer

A person without her or his own truth ain't a person at all, Ida said. Anybody who tells you different - is a jackass, and no longer deserves to be called human being. — Tom Spanbauer

Books are in the mind, Grandfather Alessandro said. Too many books and you forget your body is in the world. — Tom Spanbauer

We're all just in our bodies for a moment in our life. Such a brave and lovely act it is to let the body celebrate. — Tom Spanbauer

The way I figure it, we know we got this world, so live in this one while you're here. I figure the next one will take care of itself. — Tom Spanbauer

You know, Rose said, You're not the first man in history who thinks his cock is the path to wisdom. You're not the first man to make his hard-on into the Holy Grail. — Tom Spanbauer

There is nothing more lonely than a true artist. — Tom Spanbauer

Some people like to bitch, Rose said. Bitching is OK. But for me, I choose a kind of joy
a lucid compulsion
a polemical kind of fuck-you-motherfucker joy. — Tom Spanbauer

Her heartbeat was in her hands, her heart beat the way she moved her head, her whole body was her heart beating. — Tom Spanbauer

So I'm smoking in the house, Mother said. And Bobbie's got a dog in her room. And your son Will's got an Injun in his. So there it is, Mother said. Like it or lump it! — Tom Spanbauer

Maybe you've had skin next to your skin, but when was the last time you let yourself be touched? — Tom Spanbauer

With tybo men there isn't much difference between fucking and killing. — Tom Spanbauer

For the most part, I'd say if you crossed a cat with a smart dog, made him a matriarchal vegetarian, gave him sleek beauty, a mass of muscle, and the desire to run, then what you'd have is a horse. — Tom Spanbauer

takes a devil to make a decent angel. — Tom Spanbauer

Strange when that part in you is touched how quickly you can fall apart. It's as if the words that are being said go to the deepest place, the place in you that's become the way you've become so you can keep on going. The helmet you put on when you were a kid that grew into your head and now someone is saying you have a helmet on your head. — Tom Spanbauer

Weird here is something we aspire to, something we perfect, get degrees in, get awards for. — Tom Spanbauer

Looking for who I am is who I am. — Tom Spanbauer

That's when you stop being one way and start being another, Ruby said. Not something many people can do, or want to do. In fact, Ruby said, The only people who cross over, cross over because they're on some kind of Mission Impossible.
I could no longer live and stay the way I was, I said. — Tom Spanbauer

The Shy Hunter is terrified that others will destroy the truth within his heart, Rose said, And so the Shy Hunter armours himself ... thus armoured, he watches and waits and studies the world meticulously, hunting the world for prey ... Prey not in the sense of devouring or murder, Rose said, But prey in the sense of hunting for sore truths within another human heart. — Tom Spanbauer

Things start where you don't know and end up where you know. When you know is when you ask, How did this start? — Tom Spanbauer