Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Edward Abbey
Age: 62 †
Born: 1927
Born: January 29
Died: 1989
Died: March 14
Author
Environmentalist
Essayist
Novelist
Philosopher
Screenwriter
Writer
Edward Paul Abbey
Friends
Promote
Lying
Bliss
Write
Enemies
Truth
Record
Writing
Records
Esthetic
Time
Enemy
Folded
Courses
Unfold
Course
Entertain

More quotes by Edward Abbey

Image
Saving the world is only a hobby. Most of the time I do nothing.
Edward Abbey
Image
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
Image
Some people write to please, to soothe, to console. Others to provoke, to challenge, to exasperate and infuriate. I've always found the second approach the more pleasing.
Edward Abbey
Image
Good writing can be defined as having something to say and saying it well. When one has nothing to say, one should remain silent. Silence is always beautiful at such times.
Edward Abbey
Image
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
Image
Every moment is precious. And precarious.
Edward Abbey
Image
When the situation is desperate, it is too late to be serious. Be playful.
Edward Abbey
Image
A giant thirst is a great joy when quenched in time.
Edward Abbey
Image
New Yorkers like to boast that if you can survive in New York, you can survive anywhere. But if you can survive anywhere, why live in New York?
Edward Abbey
Image
A man on foot, on horseback or on a bicycle will see more, feel more, enjoy more in one mile than the motorized tourists can in a hundred miles.
Edward Abbey
Image
There's nothing so obscene and depressing as an American Christmas.
Edward Abbey
Image
When the situation is hopeless, there's nothing to worry about.
Edward Abbey
Image
I have found through trial and error that I work best under duress. In fact I work only under duress.
Edward Abbey
Image
When the biggest, richest, glassiest buildings in town are the banks, you know that town's in trouble.
Edward Abbey
Image
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
Image
Reincarnation? There is such a thing. What could be more Mozartian than the Nutcracker Suite?
Edward Abbey
Image
Of all bores, the worst is the sparkling bore.
Edward Abbey
Image
A pretty girl can do no wrong.
Edward Abbey
Image
Nothing can excel a few days in jail for giving a young man or woman a quick education in the basis of industrial society.
Edward Abbey
Image
Hierarchical institutions are like giant bulldozers -- obedient to the whim of any fool who takes the controls.
Edward Abbey