Death is every man's final critic. To die well you must live bravely. — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
Critics are like ticks on a dog or tits on a motor: ornamental but dysfunctional. — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
Readers, not critics, are the people who determine a book's eventual fate. — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
Literary critics, like a herd of cows or a school of fish, always face in the same direction, obeying that love for… — 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
The critics say that Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony has no form. They are wrong; it has the form of Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony. — 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
Edmund Wilson was our greatest American literary critic because he was more than a literary critic: He was a fearless, even radical… — 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
Why the critics, like a flock of ducks, always move in perfect unison: Their authority with the public depends upon an appearance… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
John Updike: our greatest suburban chic-boutique man of letters. A smug and fatal complacency has stunted his growth beyond hope of surgical… — 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
