“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
I always write with my .357 magnum handy. Why? Well, you never know when God may try to interfere. — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
“[R]eality and real people are too subtle and complicated for anybody's typewriter, even Tolstoy's, even yours, even mine.” — 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
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
In writing, fidelity to fact leads eventually to the poetry of truth. — 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
My sole literary ambition is to write one good novel, then retire to my hut in the desert, assume the lotus position,… — 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
Style: There is something in too much verbal felicity (as in Joyce or Nabokov or Borges) that can betray the writer into… — 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
When a writer has done the best that he can do, he should then withdraw from the book-writing business and take up… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
The moral duty of the free writer is to begin his work at home: to be a critic of his own community,… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
Beware the writer who always encloses the word *reality* in quotation marks: He's trying to slip something over on you. Or into… — 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
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
The sneakiest form of literary subtlety, in a corrupt society, is to speak the plain truth. The critics will not understand you;… — 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
“There are only two living American authors fully deserving of the Nobel Prize. One is Lewis Mumford. The other is Wallace Stegner,… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
“Should a writer have a social purpose? Any honest writer is bound to become a critic of the society he lives in,… — 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
When I write "paradise" I mean not only apple trees and golden women but also scorpions and tarantulas and flies, rattlesnakes and… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
Poor Dimitri Shostakovich: In the Soviet Union, he was condemned as being too radical; in the West, for being too conservative. He… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
To the Technocrats: Have mercy on us. Relax a bit, take time out for simple pleasures. For example, the luxuries of electricity,… — 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
“But hell, I do like to write letters. Much easier than writing books.” — 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
Any hack can safely rail away at foreign powers beyond the sea; but a good writer is a critic of the society… — 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
“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
Writing on the wall: Will trade three blind crabs for two with no teeth. — 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
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
The best American writers have come from the hinterlands -- Mark Twain, Theodore Dreiser, Jack London, Hemingway, Faulkner, Wolfe, Steinbeck. Most of… — 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
![“[R]eality and real people are too subtle and complicated for anybody's typewriter, even Tolstoy's, even yours, even mine.” quote by Edward Abbey](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/eb8/edward-abbey-254_complicated_r-eality-and-real-people-are-too-subtle_632160.png)
