# Quote — Tom Robbins, Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas

> Night, when tangos play on the nurse's radio and rat poison sings its own hot song behind the cellar door. Night, when the long snake feeds, when the black sedan cruises the pleasure districts, when neon flickers "Free at Last" in a dozen lost languages, and shapes left over from childhood move furtively behind the moon-dizzy boughs of the fir.

- Author: [Tom Robbins](https://www.leafyquotes.com/tom-robbins.md)
- Book: [Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas](https://www.leafyquotes.com/tom-robbins/half-asleep-in-frog-pajamas.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Tom_Robbins#Half_Asleep_in_Frog_Pajamas_(1994)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/tom-robbins/half-asleep-in-frog-pajamas/night-when-tangos

## More from this book

> Midnight, when the monotonous tick-tock of diurnal progress is for one throbbing moment replaced by the cool but smokey honk of a saxophone, alternately seductive and threatening. Midnight. The black growth on the clock face that has to be biopsied every twenty-four hours to see whether it is malignant or benign.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/tom-robbins/half-asleep-in-frog-pajamas/midnight-when-the.md)

> I’m acquainted with a, uh, gentleman who claims that the extent to which a society focuses on the needs of its lowest common denominator is the extent to which that society’ll be mired in mediocrity. Whereas, if we would aim the bulk of our support at the brightest, most talented, most virtuous instead, then they would have the wherewithal to solve a lot of our problems, to uplift the whole culture, enlighten it or something, so that eventually there wouldn’t be so many losers and weaklings impeding evolution and dragging the whole species down. He claims that martyrs like you just perpetuate human misery by catering to it. He believes individuals have to take responsibility for their own lives and accept the consequences of their choices.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/tom-robbins/half-asleep-in-frog-pajamas/im-acquainted-with.md)

> In this room, the salamander was squashed between the pages of the rhyming dictionary, thereby changing poetry forever. Here, Salome walked around with a big red fish held high up over her head. Old Father spanked her with a ballet slipper, sending her to bed without milk or honey. Dance was changed in this room, too.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/tom-robbins/half-asleep-in-frog-pajamas/in-this-room.md)