The bestselling counterculture novelist, whose books included Even Cowgirls Get the Blues and Another Roadside Attraction, has died at 92

Tom Robbins, the bestselling chronicler of the weird, whimsical and off-the-wall, has died at the age of 92, his family confirmed on Sunday.

A prolific writer and editor, Robbins aligned with the hippie sensibilities of the 1960s, writing books under his guiding philosophy of “serious playfulness” – outlandish characters, absurd metaphors and fantastical prose, like a hit of literary LSD. His novels, including Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, Another Roadside Attraction and Still Life With Woodpecker, garnered a cult following, even as they were dismissed by mainstream critics as overwrought.

What I try to do, among other things, is to mix fantasy and spirituality, sexuality, humor and poetry in combinations that have never quite been seen before in literature. And I guess when a reader finishes one of my books … I would like for him or her to be in the state that they would be in after a Fellini film or a Grateful Dead concert.
– to January Magazine, 2000

Minds were made for blowing.
– Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas, 1994

Love easily confuses us because it is always in flux between illusion and substance, between memory and wish, between contentment and need.
– Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, 1976

When we’re incomplete, we’re always searching for somebody to complete us. When, after a few years or a few months of a relationship, we find that we’re still unfulfilled, we blame our partners and take up with somebody more promising. This can go on and on – series polygamy – until we admit that while a partner can add sweet dimensions to our lives, we, each of us, are responsible for our own fulfillment. Nobody else can provide it for us, and to believe otherwise is to delude ourselves dangerously and to program for eventual failure every relationship we enter.
– Still Life With Woodpecker, 1980

The highest function of love is that it makes the loved one a unique and irreplaceable being.
– Jitterbug Perfume, 1984

Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won’t adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honor and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet. That would mean that security is out of the question. The words “make” and “stay” become inappropriate. My love for you has no strings attached. I love you for free.
– Still Life With Woodpecker

Our lives are not as limited as we think they are; the world is a wonderfully weird place; consensual reality is significantly flawed; no institution can be trusted, but love does work; all things are possible; and we all could be happy and fulfilled if we only had the guts to be truly free and the wisdom to shrink our egos and quit taking ourselves so damn seriously.
– to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 2007