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It is not the writer's task to answer questions but to question answers. To be impertinent, insolent, and, if necessary, subversive.

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
Questions
Answer
Necessary
Writer
Impertinent
Question
Insolent
Answers
Subversive
Task
Tasks

More quotes by Edward Abbey

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Why do I write? I write to entertain my friends and to exasperate our enemies. To unfold the folded lie, to record to truth of our time, and, of course, to promote esthetic bliss.
Edward Abbey
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The city itself swung slowly toward us silent as a dream. No sign of life but puffs of steam from skyscraper chimneys, the motion of the traffic. The mighty towers stood like tombstones in a graveyard, leaning against the sky and waiting for -- for what? Someday we'll know.
Edward Abbey
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The nuclear bomb took all the fun out of war.
Edward Abbey
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There are two kinds of people I cannot abide: bigots and any well-organized ethnic group.
Edward Abbey
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Nearly all of Latin America, from Chile to Mexico, is one long rack of torture. Financed, equipped, and refined by the U.S. government.
Edward Abbey
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I have written much about many good places. But the best places of all, I have never mentioned.
Edward Abbey
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Representative government has broken down. Our politicians represent not the people who vote for them but the commercial interests who finance their election campaigns. We have the best politicians that money can buy.
Edward Abbey
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A critic is to an author as a fungus to an oak.
Edward Abbey
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The developers and entrepreneurs must somehow be taught a new vocabulary of values.
Edward Abbey
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I have found through trial and error that I work best under duress. In fact I work only under duress.
Edward Abbey
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The tragic sense of life: our heroic acceptance of the suffering of others.
Edward Abbey
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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
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In this glare of brilliant emptiness, in this arid intensity of pure heat, in the heart of a weird solitude, great silence and grand desolution, all things recede to distrances out of reach, relecting light but impossible to touch, annihilating all thought and all that men have made to a spasm of whirling dust far out on the golden desert.
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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All governments need enemies. How else to justify their existence?
Edward Abbey
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We know so very little about this strange planet we live on, this haunted world where all answers lead only to more mystery.
Edward Abbey
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Truth is always the enemy of power. And power the enemy of truth.
Edward Abbey
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One of the pleasant things about small town life is that everyone, whether rich or poor, liked or disliked, has some kind of a role and place in the community. I never felt that living in a city - as I once did for a couple of years.
Edward Abbey
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Government should be weak, amateurish and ridiculous. At present, it fulfills only a third of the role.
Edward Abbey
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Tofu and futons. The adepts of Orientalism seem to spend most of their lives reclining. They can't quite summon the energy to crawl up onto a chair. Even their Yogic exercises are carried out in a prone or sitting position.
Edward Abbey