Quote

My sole literary ambition is to write one good novel, then retire to my hut in the desert, assume the lotus position, compose my mind and senses, and sink into meditation, contemplating my novel.

Edward Abbey

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Edward Abbey
Age: 62 †
Born: 1927
Born: January 29
Died: 1989
Died: March 14
Author
Environmentalist
Essayist
Novelist
Philosopher
Screenwriter
Writer
Edward Paul Abbey
Write
Assume
Huts
Writing
Desert
Compose
Mind
Assuming
Retire
Good
Senses
Sink
Ambition
Contemplating
Meditation
Retiring
Novel
Literary
Lotuses
Position
Sole
Lotus

More quotes by Edward Abbey

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Why the critics, like a flock of ducks, always move in perfect unison: Their authority with the public depends upon an appearance of unanimous agreement. One dissenting voice would shatter the whole fragile structure.
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Tee Vee football: one team wins, one team loses -- they tie -- who cares? And why?
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You can't belay a man who's falling in love.
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A pretty girl can do no wrong.
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Men love their ideas more than their lives. And the more preposterous the idea, the more eager they are to die for it. And to kill for it.
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Running the big rapids is like sex: half the fun lies in the anticipation. Two thirds of the thrill with the approach. The remainder is only ecstasy-or darkness.
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A giant thirst is a great joy when quenched in time.
Edward Abbey
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Fence straddlers have no balls. In compensation, however, they enjoy a comfortable seat and can retreat swiftly, when danger threatens, to either side of the fence. There is something to be said for every position.
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I must confess that I know nothing whatsoever about true underlying reality, never having met any.
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Motherhood is an essential, difficult, and full-time job. Women who do not wish to be mothers should not have babies.
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Balance, that's the secret. Moderate extremism. The best of both worlds.
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Congress is always willing to appropriate money for more and bigger paved roads, anywhere -- particularly if they form loops.
Edward Abbey
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In America, as elsewhere, the general irritability level keeps rising.
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I don't see how poetry can ever be easy... Real poetry, the thick, dense, intense, complicated stuff that lives and endures, requires blood sweat blood and sweat are essential elements in poetry as well as behind it.
Edward Abbey
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Reincarnation? There is such a thing. What could be more Mozartian than the Nutcracker Suite?
Edward Abbey
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It may be true that my desk here is really 'nothing but' a transient eddy of electrons in the flux of universal process. Nevertheless, I find that it continues to support my feet, my revolver, and my cigars all day long. What happens when my back is turned I don't know. Or much care. That's no concern of mine.
Edward Abbey
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Man's deliberate destruction of his own habitat -- planet Earth -- could serve as a mighty theme for a mighty book worthy of a modern Melville or Tolstoy. But our best fictioneers confine themselves to domestic drama -- soap opera with literary trimmings.
Edward Abbey
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Literature, like anything else, can become a wearisome business if you make a lifetime specialty of it. A healthy, wholesome man would no more spend his entire life reading great books than he would packing cookies for Nabisco.
Edward Abbey
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Has joy any survival value in the operations of evolution? I suspect that it does I suspect that the morose and fearful are doomed to quick extinction. Where there is no joy there can be no courage and without courage all other virtues are useless.
Edward Abbey
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In writing, fidelity to fact leads eventually to the poetry of truth.
Edward Abbey