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My notion of a great novel is something like a five-hundred-page shaggy-dog story, with only the punch line omitted.

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
Great
Dog
Something
Line
Like
Hundred
Shaggy
Novel
Omitted
Lines
Punch
Five
Page
Story
Notion
Stories
Pages

More quotes by Edward Abbey

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A man's duty? To be ready -- with rifle or rood -- to defend his home when the showdown comes.
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It's a fool's life, a rogue's life, and a good life if you keep laughing all the way to the grave.
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A woman, as much as a man, is responsible by the age of forty for the character of her face. But women, obeying the biological imperative, strive harder to preserve a youthful appearance (the reproductive look) and lose it sooner.
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A cowboy is a farm boy in leather britches and a comical hat.
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Those who fear death most are those who enjoy life least.
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Most of what we call the classics of world literature suggest artifacts in a wax museum. We have to hire and pay professors to get them read and talked about.
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The great question of life is not the question of death but the question of life. Fear of death shames us all.
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It is not an easy thing to inflate a dog.
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High technology has done us one great service: It has retaught us the delight of performing simple and primordial tasks - chopping wood, building a fire, drawing water from a spring
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Wilderness begins in the human mind.
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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.
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Concrete is heavy iron is hard - but the grass will prevail.
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Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul.
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In writing, fidelity to fact leads eventually to the poetry of truth.
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The ready availability of suicide, like sex and alcohol, is one of life's basic consolations.
Edward Abbey
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Wealth should come like manna from heaven, unearned and uncalled for. Money should be like grace -- a gift. It is not worth sweating and scheming for.
Edward Abbey
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Men have never loved one another much, for reasons we can readily understand: Man is not a lovable animal.
Edward Abbey
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The death penalty would be even more effective, as a deterrent, if we executed a few innocent people more often.
Edward Abbey
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The desert wears... a veil of mystery. Motionless and silent it evokes in us an elusive hint of something unknown, unknowable, about to be revealed. Since the desert does not act it seems to be waiting -- but waiting for what?
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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