American author (1927-1989)
Love is a disease. A social disease. A romantic, venereal, medieval disease. A hangover from the days of the fornicating troubadours and the gentlemen in iron britches.
EDWARD ABBEY
The Serpents of Paradise
Every man, every woman, carries in heart and mind the image of the ideal place, the right place, the one true home, known or unknown, actual or visionary. A houseboat in Kashmir, a view down Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, a gray gothic farmhouse two stories high at the end of a red dog road in the Allegheny Mountains, a cabin on the shore of a blue lake in spruce and fir country, a greasy alley near the Hoboken waterfront, or even, possibly, for those of a less demanding sensibility, the world to be seen from a comfortable apartment high in the tender, velvety smog of Manhattan, Chicago, Paris, Tokyo, Rio, or Rome -- there's no limit to the human capacity for the homing sentiment.
EDWARD ABBEY
"The First Morning", Desert Solitaire
A great thirst is a great joy when quenched in time.
EDWARD ABBEY
"Water", Desert Solitaire
Man the Pest, multiplied to the swarming stage, is attacking the remaining forests like a plague of locusts on a field of grain.
EDWARD ABBEY
"The Crooked Wood", The Journey Home
Where life is there is death, reasons the vulture, and where there's death there's hope.
EDWARD ABBEY
One Life at a Time, Please
Violence, it's as American as pizza pie.
EDWARD ABBEY
The Monkey Wrench Gang
I'd sooner exchange ideas with the birds on earth than learn to carry on intergalactic communications with some obscure race of humanoids on a satellite planet from the world of Betelgeuse.
EDWARD ABBEY
"The First Morning", Desert Solitaire
Guns don't kill people; people kill people. Of course, people with guns kill more people. But that's only natural. It's hard. But it's fair.
EDWARD ABBEY
Abbey's Road
What our economists call a depressed area almost always turns out to be a cleaner, freer, more livable place than most.
EDWARD ABBEY
A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto)
I try to think of a favorite among my arid-country flowers. But I love them all. How could we be true to one without being false to all the others?
EDWARD ABBEY
Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside
To die alone, on rock under sun at the brink of the unknown, like a wolf, like a great bird, seems to me very good fortune indeed.
EDWARD ABBEY
"The Dead Man at Grandview Point", Desert Solitaire
At that moment I was ready to forsake my other home, forsake my mother and father and little sister and all my friends, and spend the rest of my life in the desert eating cactus for lunch, drinking blood at cocktail time, and letting the ferocious sun flay me skin and soul. I'd gladly have traded parents, school, a college education and a career for one dependable saddle hourse. Later that night, of course, alone in bed, the deadly homesickness would strike me faint.
EDWARD ABBEY
Fire on the Mountain
Our culture runs on coffee and gasoline, the first often tasting like the second.
EDWARD ABBEY
Down the River
A cowboy is a hired hand on the middle of a horse contemplating the hind end of a cow.
EDWARD ABBEY
A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto)
We like the taste of freedom ... because we like the smell of danger.
EDWARD ABBEY
Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside
Growth for the sake of growth is a cancerous madness.
EDWARD ABBEY
"Water", Desert Solitaire
When the biggest, richest, glassiest buildings in town are the banks, you know that town's in trouble.
EDWARD ABBEY
A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto)
A pessimist is simply an optimist in full possession of the facts.
EDWARD ABBEY
Hayduke Lives
The earth will survive our most ingenious folly.
EDWARD ABBEY
"Shadows from the Big Woods", The Journey Home
Each thing in its way, when true to its own character, is equally beautiful.
EDWARD ABBEY
"Cliffrose and Bayonets", Desert Solitaire