Quote

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

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What draws us into the desert is the search for something intimate in the remote.
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Our contemporary Tories prefer the term 'ordered liberty' to 'freedom'. The word 'freedom' scares them it has too much of a paleolithic ring to it.
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When the situation is hopeless, there's nothing to worry about.
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I have been a lucky man. But someone has to be.
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A good book is a kind of paper club, serving to rouse the slumbrous and to silence the obtuse.
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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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How can I be so evil? It ain't easy.
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Whenever I see a photograph of some sportsman grinning over his kill, I am always impressed by the striking moral and esthetic superiority of the dead animal to the live one.
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I love America because it is a confused, chaotic mess - and I hope we can keep it this way for at least another thousand years. The permissive society is the free society.
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I would not sacrifice a single living mesquite tree for any book ever written. One square mile of living desert is worth a hundred 'great books' - and one brave deed is worth a thousand.
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The function of football, soccer, basketball and other passion-sports in modern industrial society is the transference of boredom, frustration, anger and rage into socially acceptable forms of combat. A temporary substitute for war for nationalism identification with something bigger than the self.
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How to Avoid Pleurisy: Never make love to a girl named Candy on the tailgate of a half-ton Ford pickup during a chill rain in April out on Grandview Point in San Juan County, Utah.
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I always write with my .357 magnum handy. Why? Well, you never know when God may try to interfere.
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All forms of government are pernicious, including good government.
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I've never yet read a review of one of my own books that I couldn't have written much better myself.
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Desire, said the Buddha, is the cause of suffering. But without desire, what delight?
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Reincarnation? There is such a thing. What could be more Mozartian than the Nutcracker Suite?
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It is not enough to understand the natural world the point is to defend and preserve it.
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Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit.
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The best people, like the best wines, come from the hills.
Edward Abbey