In the modern world, all literary art is necessarily political -- especially that which pretends not to be. — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
Art, science, philosophy, religion -- each offers at best only a crude simplification of actual living experience. — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
The artist in our time has two chief responsibilities: (1) art; and (2) sedition. — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
Henry James was our master of periphrasis -- the fine art of saying as little as possible in the greatest number of… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
The writer concerned more with technique than truth becomes a technician, not an artist. — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
The artist's job? To be a miracle worker: make the blind see, the dull feel, the dead to live. — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
There is a fine art to making enemies and it requires diligent cultivation. It's not as easy as it looks. — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
Romanticism was more than merely an alternative to a sterile classicism; romanticism made possible, especially in art, a great expansion of the… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
If America could be, once again, a nation of self-reliant farmers, craftsmen, hunters, ranchers, and artists, then the rich would have little… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
How did Haydn and Mozart produce such vast quantities of formally perfect art? They worked from a perfect formula. In music, Beethoven… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
“Certainly, I want to capture the reader's attention from the beginning and hold it until the end: that is half the purpose… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
Let the people walk. Or ride horses, bicycles, mules, wild pigs-anything-but keep the automobiles and the motorcycles and all their motorized relatives… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
“We have agreed not to drive our automobiles into cathedrals, concert halls, art museums, legislative assemblies, private bedrooms and the other sanctums… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
“There was this tendency to drift. And yet when she thought about it, what did she really want to do? Or be?… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
“Vonnegut is one of America's basic artists, a true and worthy heir to the grand tradition of Thoreau, Whitman, Twain, Dreiser, Traven,… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
“The ancient canyon art of Utah belongs in that same international museum without walls which makes African sculpture, Melanesian masks, and the… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
“No more cars in national parks. Let the people walk. Or ride horses, bicycles, mules, wild pigs--anything--but keep the automobiles and the… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
All we have, it seems to me, is the beauty of art and nature and life, and the love which that beauty… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
“What is the essence of the art of writing? Part One: Have something to say. Part Two: Say it well.” — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
In both metaphysics and art, honesty is the best policy. Keep it clean. — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
Those art lovers who pride themselves mostly on *taste* usually possess no other talent. — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
A man could be a lover and defender of the wilderness without ever in his lifetime leaving the boundaries of asphalt, powerlines, and right-angled… — Edward Abbey Copy Share
Except for the scale of the operation, there was nothing unusual about Hitler's massacre of the Jews. Genocide's an old tradition, as human as… — Edward Abbey Copy Share
By the age of eighteen, a human has acquired enough joy and heartache to provide the food of reflection for a century. — Edward Abbey Copy Share
“Our institutions are too big; they represent not the best but the worst characteristics of human beings. By submitting to huge hierarchies of power,… — Edward Abbey Copy Share
No man-made structure in all of American history has been hated so much, by so many, for so long, with such good reason, as… — Edward Abbey Copy Share
Where all pretend to be thinking alike, it's likely that no one is thinking at all. — Edward Abbey Copy Share
“But why, the questioner insists, why do people like you pretend to love uninhabited country so much? Why this cult of wilderness? Why the… — Edward Abbey Copy Share
Civilization is a youth with a molotov cocktail in his hand. Culture is the Soviet tank or L.A. cop that guns him down. — Edward Abbey Copy Share
All revolutions have failed? Perhaps. But rebellion for good cause is self- justifying -- a good in itself. Rebellion transforms slaves into human beings,… — Edward Abbey Copy Share
“Me, I'm living under a sword too, as Jack may have told you. An old wino's disease, which could lay me in the grave… — Edward Abbey Copy Share
“Look here, I want to say, for godsake folks get out of them there machines, take off those fucking sunglasses and unpeel both eyeballs,… — Edward Abbey Copy Share
“What is the essence of the art of writing? Part One: Have something to say. Part Two: Say it well.” — Edward Abbey Copy Share
