Quote

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 like shoe repair, cattle stealing, or screwworm management.

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
Book
Stealing
Take
Management
Done
Shoes
Writing
Trade
Like
Writer
Withdraw
Honest
Repair
Business
Cattle
Best
Shoe

More quotes by Edward Abbey

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The true, unacknowledged purpose of capital punishment is to inspire fear and awe -- fear and awe of the State.
Edward Abbey
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My own best books have not been published. In fact, they've not even been written yet.
Edward Abbey
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Of course I litter the public highway. Every chance I get. After all, it's not the beer cans that are ugly it's the highway that is ugly.
Edward Abbey
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Lightning streaks like gunfire through the clouds, volleys of thunder shake the air.
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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I have been a lucky man. But someone has to be.
Edward Abbey
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One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain't nothing can beat teamwork.
Edward Abbey
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Counterpart to the knee-jerk liberal is the new knee-pad conservative, always groveling before the rich and the powerful.
Edward Abbey
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What is the purpose of the giant sequoia tree? The purpose of the giant sequoia tree is to provide shade for the tiny titmouse.
Edward Abbey
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Desert springtime, with flowers popping up all over the place, trees leafing out, streams gushing down from the mountains. Great time of year for hiking, camping, exploring, sleeping under the new moon and the old stars. At dawn and at evening we hear the coyotes howling with excitement—mating season.
Edward Abbey
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Passion, sexual passion, may lead to marriage, but cannot sustain marriage. The purpose of marriage is the raising of children, for which patience, not passion, is the necessary foundation.
Edward Abbey
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Grown men do not need leaders.
Edward Abbey
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James Joyce buried himself in his great work. _Finnegan's Wake_ is his monument and his tombstone. A dead end.
Edward Abbey
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Might does not make right but it sure makes what is.
Edward Abbey
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Baseball is a slow, sluggish game, with frequent and trivial interruptions, offering the spectator many opportunities to reflect at leisure upon the situation on the field: This is what a fan loves most about the game
Edward Abbey
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You long for success? Start at the bottom dig down.
Edward Abbey
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We live in a time of twin credulities: the hunger for the miraculous combined with a servile awe of science. The mating of the two gives us superstition plus scientism -- a Mongoloid metaphysic.
Edward Abbey
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Jane Austen: Getting into her books is like getting in bed with a cadaver. Something vital is lacking namely, life.
Edward Abbey
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It is true that some of my fiction was based on actual events. But the events took place after the fiction was written.
Edward Abbey
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The gurus come from the sickliest nation on earth to tell us how to live. And we pay them for it.
Edward Abbey