Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

40 quotes

Quotes by Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

"The children are innocent until proven guilty. For their sake, not ours, we must soldier on, muddling our way toward frugality, simplicity, liberty, community, until some kind of sane and rational balance is achieved between our ability to love and our cockeyed ambition to conquer and dominate everything in sight. No wonder the galaxies recede from us in every direction, fleeing at velocities that approach the speed of light. They are frightened. We humans are the Terror of the Universe."

Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

"But it is a writer's duty to write and speak and record the truth, always the truth, no matter whom may be offended."

Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

"Ah yes, the head is full of books. The hard part is to force them down through the bloodstream and out through the fingers."

Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

"As for writing, that's a cruel hard business. Unless you're very lucky it'll break your heart."

Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

"What is the essence of the art of writing? Part One: Have something to say. Part Two: Say it well."

Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

"Certainly, I want to capture the reader's attention from the beginning and hold it until the end: that is half the purpose of my art. The other half must be to tell my story in the most honest way that I can."

Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

"[R]eality and real people are too subtle and complicated for anybody's typewriter, even Tolstoy's, even yours, even mine."

Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

"In this respect the differences between the USA and the USSR are those of evangelical dinosaurs competing for domination on one small planet: the first deifies Jesus Christ, the other Karl Marx. Neither has much practical interest in what those two sincere and hard-working fellows actually preached."

Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

"The more we learn of outer space and inner space, of quasars and quarks, of Big Bangs and Little Blips, the more remote, abstract and intellectually inconsequential it all becomes."

Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

"Readers, not critics, are the people who determine a book's eventual fate."

Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

"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."

Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

"In the land of bleating sheep and braying jackasses, one brave and honest man is bound to create a scandal."

Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

"And the so-called 'political process' is a fraud: Our elected officials, like our bureaucratic functionaries, like even our judges, are largely the indentured servants of the commercial interests."

Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

"If you hope for any sort of dialogue and unity with all factions on the vaguely leftist or radical side of politics, you must cease from silly verbal abuse. If you don't want it, then we go on as we are, fractious and impotent."

Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

"The weather here is windy, balmy, sometimes wet. 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. And lots of fresh rabbit meat hopping about to feed the young ones with."

Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

"I suppose each of us has his own fantasy of how he wants to die. I would like to go out in a blaze of glory, myself, or maybe simply disappear someday, far out in the heart of the wilderness I love, all by myself, alone with the Universe and whatever God may happen to be looking on. Disappear - and never return. That's my fantasy."

Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

"A crowded society is a restrictive society; an overcrowded society becomes an authoritarian, repressive and murderous society."

Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

"But of the seven deadly sins, wrath is the healthiest - next only to lust."

Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

"Hard times are a-coming, and people without useful, practical skills are going to suffer. Or suffer most."

Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

"I'd like to see North America become a dry, sunny, sandy region inhabited mainly by lizards, buzzards and a modest human population - about 25 million would be plenty - of pastoralists and prospectors (prospecting for truth), gathering once a year in the ruins of ancient, mysterious cities for great ceremonies of music, art, dance, poetry, joy, faith and renewal. That's my dream of the American future. Like most such dreams, it will probably come true. That is why I'm still an optimist."

Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

"I believe that the military-industrial state will eventually collapse, possibly even in our lifetime, and that a majority of us (if prepared) will muddle through to a freer, more open, less crowded, green and spacious agrarian society. (Maybe; of course it may be only a repeat of the middle ages.)"

Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

"There is a certain animal vitality in most of us which carries us through any trouble but the absolutely overwhelming. Only a fool has no sorrow, only an idiot has no grief - but then only a fool and an idiot will let grief and sorrow ride him down into the grave."

Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

"Should a writer have a social purpose? Any honest writer is bound to become a critic of the society he lives in, and sometimes, like Mark Twain or Kurt Vonnegut or Leo Tolstoy or Francois Rabelais, a very harsh critic indeed. The others are sycophants, courtiers, servitors, entertainers. Shakespeare was a sychophant; however, he was and is also a very good poet, and so we continue to read him."

Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast