“But it is a writer's duty to write and speak and record the truth, always the truth, no matter whom may be… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
Most new books drop immediately into the oblivion they so richly deserve. — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
Most of the literary classics are worth reading, if you've nothing better to do. — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
“As for writing, that's a cruel hard business. Unless you're very lucky it'll break your heart.” — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
There are only two kinds of books -- good books and the others. The good are winnowed from the bad through the… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
How long does it take to write a good book? All of the years that you've lived. — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
I would prefer to write about everything; what else is there? But one must be selective. — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
All serious writers want the obvious rewards: fame, money, women, love -- and most of all, an audience! — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
Some people write to please, to soothe, to console. Others to provoke, to challenge, to exasperate and infuriate. I've always found the… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
Good writing can be defined as having something to say and saying it well. When one has nothing to say, one should… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
Literature, like anything else, can become a wearisome business if you make a lifetime specialty of it. A healthy, wholesome man would… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
Why do I write? I write to entertain my friends and to exasperate our enemies. To unfold the folded lie, to record… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
“I would not sacrifice a single living mesquite tree for any book ever written. One square mile of living desert is worth… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
It is not the writer's task to answer questions but to question answers. To be impertinent, insolent, and, if necessary, subversive. — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
“So I write mainly for the fun of it, the hell of it, the duty of it. I enjoy writing and will… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
“I might also say, regarding reviews and reviewers, that I have yet to read a review of any of my own books… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
The majority of American writers today have chosen passive non-resistance to things as they are, producing sloughs of poetry about their personal… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
“A writer must be hard to live with: when not working he is miserable, and when he is working he is obsessed.… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
Vladimir Nabokov was a writer who cared nothing for music and whose favorite sport was the pursuit, capture, and murder of butterflies.… — 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
“What I am really writing about, what I have always written about, is the idea of human freedom, human community, the real… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
“The novel should tell the truth, as I see the truth, or as the novelist persuades me to see it. And one… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
A good writer must have more than vin rose in his veins, use more than Chablis for ink. — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
The writer concerned more with technique than truth becomes a technician, not an artist. — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
My books always make the best-seller lists in Wolf Hole, Arizona, and Hanksville, Utah. — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
In order to write a book, it is necessary to sit down (or stand up) and write. Therein lies the difficulty. — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
When the writer has done his best, he then should proceed to do his second best. — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
A good book is a kind of paper club, serving to rouse the slumbrous and to silence the obtuse. — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
My notion of a great novel is something like a five-hundred-page shaggy-dog story, with only the punch line omitted. — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
James Joyce buried himself in his great work. _Finnegan's Wake_ is his monument and his tombstone. A dead end. — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
A writer must be hard to live with: when not working he is miserable, and when he is working he is obsessed. — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
It is true that some of my fiction was based on actual events. But the events took place after the fiction was… — 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
Ah yes, the head is full of books. The hard part is to force them down through the bloodstream and out through… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
Writers should avoid the academy. When a writer begins to accept pay for talking about words, we know what he will produce… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
Man's deliberate destruction of his own habitat -- planet Earth -- could serve as a mighty theme for a mighty book worthy… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
A shelf of classics for our young adults: Tolkien, Hesse, Casteneda, Kerouac, Salinger, Tom Robbins, and _The Last Whole Earth Catalog_. — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
Every writer has his favorite coterie of enemies: Mine is the East Coast literati -- those prep school playmates and their Ivy… — 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
