Edward Abbey

“People who think that love, sex, marriage, work, play, life and death are serious matters are urged NOT to read this book. Buy it, yes, but don't read it. [Regarding "The Fool's Progress"]”

“As for writing, that's a cruel hard business. Unless you're very lucky it'll break your heart.”

“This sweet virginal primitive land will metaphorically breathe a sigh of relief --like a whisper of wind--when we are all and finally gone and the place and its creations can return to their ancient procedures unobserved and undisturbed by the busy, anxious, brooding consciousness of man.”

“A crowded society is a restrictive society; an overcrowded society becomes an authoritarian, repressive and murderous society.”

“That which today calls itself science gives us more and more information, and indigestible glut of information, and less and less understanding.”

“I am hopeful, though not full of hope, and the only reason I don't believe in happy endings is because I don't believe in endings.”

“I'd like to see North America become a dry, sunny, sandy region inhabited mainly by lizards, buzzards and a modest human population - about 25 million would be plenty - of pastoralists and prospectors (prospecting for truth), gathering once a year in the ruins of ancient, mysterious cities for great ceremonies of music, art, dance, poetry, joy, faith and renewal. That's my dream of the American future. Like most such dreams, it will probably come true. That is why I'm still an optimist.”

“But it is a writer's duty to write and speak and record the truth, always the truth, no matter whom may be offended.”

“If a man's imagination were not so weak, so easily tired, if his capacity for wonder not so limited, he would abandon forever such fantasies of the supernal. He would learn to perceive in water, leaves and silence more than sufficient of the absolute and marvelous, more than enough to console him for the loss of the ancient dreams.”

“Our culture runs on coffee and gasoline, the first often tasting like the second.”

“As a confirmed melancholic, I can testify that the best and maybe only antidote for melancholia is action. However, like most melancholics, I suffer also from sloth.”

“For myself I hold no preferences among flowers, so long as they are wild, free, spontaneous. Bricks to all greenhouses! Black thumb and cutworm to the potted plant!”

“If it's knowledge and wisdom you want, then seek out the company of those who do real work for an honest purpose.”

“May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.”

“Our institutions are too big; they represent not the best but the worst characteristics of human beings. By submitting to huge hierarchies of power, we gain freedom from personal responsibility for what we do and are forced to do - the seduction of it - but we lose the dignity of being real men and women. Power corrupts; attracts the worst and corrupts the best. ... Refuse to participate in evil; insist on taking part in what is healthy, generous, and responsible. Stand up, speak out, and when necessary fight back. Get down off the fence and lend a hand, grab a-hold, be a citizen - not a subject.”

“What is the essence of the art of writing? Part One: Have something to say. Part Two: Say it well.”

“The one thing ... that is truly ugly is the climate of hate and intimidation, created by a noisy few, which makes the decent majority reluctant to air in public their views on anything controversial. ... Where all pretend to be thinking alike, it's likely that no one is thinking at all.”

“In the land of bleating sheep and braying jackasses, one brave and honest man is bound to create a scandal.”

“Say what you like about my bloody murderous government,' I says, 'but don't insult me poor bleedin' country.”

“Should a writer have a social purpose? Any honest writer is bound to become a critic of the society he lives in, and sometimes, like Mark Twain or Kurt Vonnegut or Leo Tolstoy or Francois Rabelais, a very harsh critic indeed. The others are sycophants, courtiers, servitors, entertainers. Shakespeare was a sychophant; however, he was and is also a very good poet, and so we continue to read him.”