All Edward Abbey Quotes
- There are only two kinds of books -- good books and the others. The good are winnowed from the bad through the democracy of time. Bad
- Most new books drop immediately into the oblivion they so richly deserve. Book
- A good book is a kind of paper club, serving to rouse the slumbrous and to silence the obtuse. Book
- Proust again: One can only wish that a man with such powers of total recall had led a less tedious life, moved among somewhat livelier… Among
- Jane Austen: Getting into her books is like getting in bed with a cadaver. Something vital is lacking; namely, life. Austen
- The artist in our time has two chief responsibilities: (1) art; and (2) sedition. Art
- Romanticism was more than merely an alternative to a sterile classicism; romanticism made possible, especially in art, a great expansion of the human consciousness. Alternative
- Writers should avoid the academy. When a writer begins to accept pay for talking about words, we know what he will produce soon: nothing but… Academy
- One word is worth a thousand pictures. If it's the right word. Funny
- Good writing can be defined as having something to say and saying it well. When one has nothing to say, one should remain silent. Silence… Always Beautiful
- The best American writers have come from the hinterlands -- Mark Twain, Theodore Dreiser, Jack London, Hemingway, Faulkner, Wolfe, Steinbeck. Most of them never even… American
- The writer concerned more with technique than truth becomes a technician, not an artist. Artist
- All serious writers want the obvious rewards: fame, money, women, love -- and most of all, an audience! All
- When a writer has done the best that he can do, he should then withdraw from the book-writing business and take up an honest trade… Best
- There is no trajectory so pathetic as that of an artist in decline. Artist
- When the writer has done his best, he then should proceed to do his second best. Best
- Susan Sontag: What she really wanted, throughout her career, was to grow up to be a Frenchman. Career
- How long does it take to write a good book? All of the years that you've lived. All
- My own best books have not been published. In fact, they've not even been written yet. Been
- It is true that some of my fiction was based on actual events. But the events took place after the fiction was written. Actual
- In the world of words, one of my best-loved tribes is the diatribe. Best
- Style: There is something in too much verbal felicity (as in Joyce or Nabokov or Borges) that can betray the writer into technique for the… Betray
- Every writer has his favorite coterie of enemies: Mine is the East Coast literati -- those prep school playmates and their Ivy League colleagues. Coast
- Salome had but seven veils; the artist has a thousand. Artist
- In the modern world, all literary art is necessarily political -- especially that which pretends not to be. All