American author (1927-1989)
We're all undesirable elements from somebody's point of view.
EDWARD ABBEY
Abbey's Road
Nobody seems more obsessed by diet than our anti-materialist, otherworldly, New Age, spiritual types. But if the material world is merely an illusion, an honest guru should be as content with Budweiser and bratwurst as with raw carrot juice, tofu, and seaweed slime.
EDWARD ABBEY
A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
Society is like a stew. If you don't keep it stirred up, you get a lot of scum on top.
EDWARD ABBEY
A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
I am not an atheist but an earthiest.
EDWARD ABBEY
"Down the River", Desert Solitaire
Everyone should learn a manual trade. It's never too late to become an honest person.
EDWARD ABBEY
A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto)
A pessimist is simply an optimist in full possession of the facts.
EDWARD ABBEY
Hayduke Lives
Oh! For love, for the painfully nourished, tenderly cherished, sweet frenzies illusion, the known-illusion within the globule of sentimental cynicism. For romantic love, then, I sacrifice honor, decensy, human kindness, charity, honesty, friendship and the future -- all, (ah!) for love!
EDWARD ABBEY
The Serpents of Paradise
At that moment I was ready to forsake my other home, forsake my mother and father and little sister and all my friends, and spend the rest of my life in the desert eating cactus for lunch, drinking blood at cocktail time, and letting the ferocious sun flay me skin and soul. I'd gladly have traded parents, school, a college education and a career for one dependable saddle hourse. Later that night, of course, alone in bed, the deadly homesickness would strike me faint.
EDWARD ABBEY
Fire on the Mountain
Grab a woman. Help the movement. Liberate a woman tonight. You'll get stale out here in the woods, living like a bear. Your balls will shrink, your tongue grow stiff and heavy. Your mind will wither away. Whatever became of William Gatlin? Went mad flogging his bloody duff.
EDWARD ABBEY
The Serpents of Paradise
What our economists call a depressed area almost always turns out to be a cleaner, freer, more livable place than most.
EDWARD ABBEY
A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto)
Poor Hayduke: won all his arguments but lost his immortal soul.
EDWARD ABBEY
The Monkey Wrench Gang
I'm a humanist; I'd rather kill a man than a snake.
EDWARD ABBEY
"Serpents of Paradise", Desert Solitaire
When the biggest, richest, glassiest buildings in town are the banks, you know that town's in trouble.
EDWARD ABBEY
A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto)
Love can defeat that nameless terror. Loving one another, we take the sting from death.
EDWARD ABBEY
Down the River
When the situation is hopeless, there's nothing to worry about.
EDWARD ABBEY
The Monkey Wrench Gang
Walking is the only form of transportation in which a man proceeds erect -- like a man -- on his own legs, under his own power. There is immense satisfaction in that.
EDWARD ABBEY
Postcards from Ed
The best cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy.
EDWARD ABBEY
A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.
EDWARD ABBEY
The Journey Home
There are some good things to be said about walking. Not many, but some. Walking takes longer, for example, than any other known form of locomotion except crawling. Thus it stretches time and prolongs life.
EDWARD ABBEY
"Walking", The Journey Home
I try to think of a favorite among my arid-country flowers. But I love them all. How could we be true to one without being false to all the others?
EDWARD ABBEY
Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside