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Baseball Is A Slow, Sluggish Game, With Frequent And Trivial Interruptions, Offering The Spectator Many Opportunities To Reflect At Leisure Upon The Situation On The Field: This Is What A Fan Loves Most About The Game

-Edward Abbey

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Baseball Is A Slow,

Edward Abbey

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Baseball Is A Slow, Sluggish Game, With Frequent And Trivial Interruptions, Offering The Spectator Many Opportunities To Reflect At Leisure Upon The Situation On The Field: This Is What A Fan Loves Most About The Game

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Alaska Is Our Biggest, Buggiest, Boggiest State. Texas Remains Our Largest Unfrozen State. But Mountainous Utah, If Ironed Out Flat, Would Take Up More Space On A Map Than Either.

There Has Never Yet Been A Human Society Worthy Of The Name Of Civilization. Civilization Remains A Remote Ideal.

Jane Austen: Getting Into Her Books Is Like Getting In Bed With A Cadaver. Something Vital Is Lacking; Namely, Life.

The Majority Of American Writers Today Have Chosen Passive Non-resistance To Things As They Are, Producing Sloughs Of Poetry About Their Personal Angst And Anomie, Cascades Of Short Stories And Rivers Of Novels Obsessed With The Nuances Of Domestic Relationships - Suburban Hanky-panky - Chic Boutique Shopping Mall Literary Soap Opera. When They Do Speak Out On Matters Of Controversy They Attack Not The Evils Of Our Time But Fellow Writers Who May Insist On Complaining.

The Death Penalty Would Be Even More Effective, As A Deterrent, If We Executed A Few Innocent People More Often.

Do Not Burn Yourselves Out. Be As I Am - A Reluctant Enthusiast... A Part-time Crusader, A Half-hearted Fanatic. Save The Other Half Of Yourselves And Your Lives For Pleasure And Adventure.

An Empty Man Is Full Of Himself.

Simply Because Humankind Have The Power Now To Meddle Or 'manage' Or 'exercise Stewardship' In Every Nook And Cranny Of The World Does Not Mean That We Have A Right To Do So. Even Less, The Obligation.

We Should Restore The Practice Of Dueling. It Might Improve Manners Around Here.

What Is Truth? I Don't Know And I'm Sorry I Brought It Up.

God Is A Sound People Make When They're Too Tired To Think Anymore.

Generally Speaking, It's A Matter Of Only Mild Intellectual Interest To Me Whether The Earth Goes Around The Sun Or The Sun Goes Around The Earth. In Fact, I Don't Care A Rat's Ass Either Way.

What We Need Now Are Heroes And Heroines, About A Million Of Them, One Brave Deed Is Worth A Thousand Books. Sentiment Without Action Is The Ruin Of The Soul.

The Sense Of Justice Springs From Self-respect; Both Are Coeval With Our Birth. Children Are Born With An Innate Sense Of Justice; It Usually Takes Twelve Years Of Public Schooling And Four More Years Of College To Beat It Out Of Them.

The Extreme Clarity Of The Desert Light Is Equaled By The Extreme Individuation Of Desert Life Forms. Love Flowers Best In Openness And Freedom.

It's A Fool's Life, A Rogue's Life, And A Good Life If You Keep Laughing All The Way To The Grave.

Rocks, Like Louseworts And Snail Darters And Pupfish And 3rdworld Black, Lesbian, Feminist, Militant Poets, Have Rights, Too. Especially The Right To Exist.

The Rich Can Buy Everything But Health, Virtue, Friendship, Wit, Good Looks, Love, Pride, Intelligence, Grace, And, If You Need It, Happiness.

Beauty Is Only Skin Deep; Ugliness Goes All The Way Through.

Beauty Is Only Skin Deep

One Must Be Reasonable In One's Demands On Life. For Myself, All That I Ask Is: (1) Accurate Information; (2) Coherent Knowledge; (3) Deep Understanding; (4) Infinite Loving Wisdom; (5) No More Kidney Stones, Please.

Deep Understanding

We Live In The Kind Of World Where Courage Is The Most Essential Of Virtues; Without Courage, The Other Virtues Are Useless.

How Strange And Wonderful Is Our Home, Our Earth, With Its Swirling Vaporous Atmosphere, Its Flowing And Frozen Liquids, Its Trembling Plants, Its Creeping, Crawling, Climbing Creatures, The Croaking Things With Wings That Hang On Rocks And Soar Through The Fog, The Furry Grass, The Scaly Seas.

Power Is Always Dangerous. Power Attracts The Worst And Corrupts The Best.

When A Man Must Be Afraid To Drink Freely From His Country's River And Streams That Country Is No Longer Fit To Live In.

God Bless America. Let's Try To Save Some Of It.

The Love Of A Man For His Wife, His Child, Of The Land Where He Lives And Works, Is For Me The Real Meaning Of Mystical Experience.

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.

In Social Affairs, I'm An Optimist. I Really Do Believe That Our Military- Industrial Civilization Will Soon Collapse.

Longevity, Like Intelligence And Good Looks And Health And Strength Of Character, Is Largely A Matter Of Genetic Heritage. Choose Your Parents With Care.

The Night I Filled An Inside Straight: Even A Blind Hog's Gonna Root Up An Acorn Once In A While.

In All Of Nature, There Is No Sound More Pleasing Than That Of A Hungry Animal At Its Feed. Unless You Are The Food.

Anton Bruckner Wrote The Same Symphony Nine Times, Trying To Get It Just Right. He Failed.

Heaven Is Home. Utopia Is Here. Nirvana Is Now.

I Wait. Now The Night Flows Back, The Mighty Stillness Embraces And Includes Me; I Can See The Stars Again And The World Of Starlight. I Am Twenty Miles Or More From The Nearest Fellow Human, But Instead Of Loneliness I Feel Loveliness. Loveliness And A Quiet Exultation.

Ah Yes, The Head Is Full Of Books. The Hard Part Is To Force Them Down Through The Bloodstream And Out Through The Fingers.

Love Flowers Best In Openness And Freedom.

Flora And Fauna

In The Soviet Union, Government Controls Industry. In The United States, Industry Controls Government. That Is The Principal Structural Difference Between The Two Great Oligarchies Of Our Time.

Be Loyal To What You Love, Be True To The Earth, Fight Your Enemies With Passion And Laughter.

I Always Wanted To Be A Cowboy. But Alas! I Was Burdened Early With Certain Inescapable Obligations To World Literature.

World Literature

The Most Striking Thing About The Rich Is The Gracious Democracy Of Their Manners -- And The Crude Vulgarity Of Their Way Of Life.

The Tragedy Of Modern War Is That The Young Men Die Fighting Each Other - Instead Of Their Real Enemies Back Home In The Capitals.

Running The Big Rapids Is Like Sex: Half The Fun Lies In The Anticipation. Two Thirds Of The Thrill With The Approach. The Remainder Is Only Ecstasy-or Darkness.

One Man Alone Can Be Pretty Dumb Sometimes, But For Real Bona Fide Stupidity, There Ain't Nothing Can Beat Teamwork.

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.

I Understand And Sympathize With The Reasonable Needs Of A Reasonable Number Of People On A Finite Continent. All Life Depends Upon Other Life. But What Is Happening Today, In North America, Is Not Rational Use But Irrational Massacre. Man The Pest, Multiplied To The Swarming Stage, Is Attacking The Remaining Forests Like A Plague Of Locusts On A Field Of Grain.

We Judge Individual Man And Women As We Do Nations And Races -- By The Character Of Their Achievement And By Their Achievement Of Character.

Simplicity Is Always A Virtue.

The Longest Journey Begins With A Single Step, Not With The Turn Of An Ignition Key. That’s The Best Thing About Walking, The Journey Itself. It Doesn’t Much Matter Whether You Get Where You’re Going Or Not. You’ll Get There Anyway. Every Good Hike Brings You Eventually Back Home. Right Where You Started.

The Axiom Of Conditioned Repetition, Like The Binomial Theorem, Is Nothing But A Piece Of Insolence.

Girls: I Never Wanted Them All. Just All The Ones I Wanted.

The World Exists For Its Own Sake, Not For Ours. Swallow *that* Pill!

Life Is Too Short For Grief. Or Regret. Or Bullshit.

The World Of Employer And Employee, Like That Of Master And Slave, Debases Both.

Mayonnaise, Like Hollandaise, Was Invented By The French To Cover Up The Flavor Of Spoiled Flesh, Stale Vegetables, Rotten Fish. Beware The Sauce! Where Food Comes Beslobbered With An Elegant Slime You May Well Suspect The Integrity Of The Basic Ingredients.

Quantum Mechanics Provides Us With An Approximate, Plausible, Conjectural Explanation Of What Actually Is, Or Was, Or May Be Taking Place Inside A Cyclotron During A Dark Night In February.

I Stand For What I Stand On.

When A Man's Best Friend Is His Dog, That Dog Has A Problem.

There Is A Deep, Abiding, Unshakable Satisfaction In A Life Of Complete Failure.

Life Is Too Tragic For Sadness: Let Us Rejoice.

The Greater Your Dreams, The More Terrible Your Nightmares.

Phoenix, Arizona: An Oasis Of Ugliness In The Midst Of A Beautiful Wasteland.

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?

Passion, Sexual Passion, May Lead To Marriage, But Cannot Sustain Marriage. The Purpose Of Marriage Is The Raising Of Children, For Which Patience, Not Passion, Is The Necessary Foundation.

Money Confers The Power To Command The Labor Of Others. Love Of Money Is Love Of Power. And Love Of Power Is The Root Of Evil.

Some Of My Ancestors Fought In The American Revolution. A Few More Wore Red Coats, A Few Wore Blue Coats, And The Rest Wore No Coats At All. We Never Did Figure Out Who Won That War.

The Idea Of Wilderness Needs No Defense. It Only Needs More Defenders. Remaining Silent About The Destruction Of Nature Is An Endorsement Of That Destruction.

As Between The Skulking And Furtive Poacher, Who Hunts For The Sake Of Meat, And The Honest Gentleman Shooter, Who Kills For The Pleasure Of Sport, I Find The Former A Higher Type Of Humanity.

The Best Thing About Graduating From The University Was That I Finally Had Time To Sit On A Log And Read A Good Book.

To The Question: Wilderness, Who Needs It? Doc Would Say: Because We Like The Taste Of Freedom, Comrades. Because We Like The Smell Of Danger. But, Thought Hayduke, What About The Smell Of Fear, Dad?

It Is Always Dishonest For A Reviewer To Review The Author Instead Of The Author's Book.

A True Conservative Must Necessarily Be A Conservationist.

When I Hear The Word 'culture', I Reach For My Checkbook.

Shakespeare Wrote Great Poetry And Preposterous Plays. Who Really Cares, For Example, Which Petty Tyrant Rules Milan? Or Who Succeeds To The Throne Of Denmark? Or Why The Barons Ganged Up On Richard Ii?

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.

Critics Are Like Ticks On A Dog Or Tits On A Motor: Ornamental But Dysfunctional.

Epitaphs For A Gravestone: 'please: No Hooliganism'; Or 'es Prohibe Se Hace Agua Aqui'; Or 'no Comment'.

Is It Possible To Grow Wiser Without Knowing It? One Hopes So. We All Hope So.

Married Couples Who Quarrel Bitterly Every Day May Really Need Each Other As Deeply As Those Who Appear To Be Desperately In Love.

I Hate Intellectual Discussion. When I Hear The Words 'phenomenology' Or 'structuralism', I Reach For My Buck Knife.

War: First Day In The U.s. Army, The Government Placed A Bible In My Left Hand, A Bayonet In The Other.

I Have Written Much About Many Good Places. But The Best Places Of All, I Have Never Mentioned.

You Cannot Reshape Human Nature Without Mutilating Human Beings.

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.

There Comes A Time In The Life Of Us All When We Must Lay Aside Our Books Or Put Down Our Tools And Leave Our Place Of Work And Walk Forth On The Road To Meet The Enemy Face-to-face. Once And For All And At Last

I'm Happy To Respect Authority When It's Genuine Authority, Based On Moral Or Intellectual Or Even Technical Superiority. I'm Eager To Follow A Hero If We Can Find One. But I Tend To Resist Or Evade Any Kind Of Authority Based Merely On The Power To Coerce. Government, For Example. The Army Tried To Train Us To Salute The Uniform, Not The Man. Failed. I Will Salute The Man, Maybe, If I Think He's Worthy Of It, But I Don't Salute Uniforms Anymore.

Nothing Could Be More Reckless Than To Base One's Moral Philosophy On The Latest Pronouncements Of Science.

Men Come And Go, Cities Rise And Fall, Whole Civilizations Appear And Disappear-the Earth Remains, Slightly Modified. The Earth Remains, And The Heartbreaking Beauty Where There Are No Hearts To Break....i Sometimes Choose To Think, No Doubt Perversely, That Man Is A Dream, Thought An Illusion, And Only Rock Is Real. Rock And Sun.

Every Important Change In Our Society, For The Good, At Least, Has Taken Place Because Of Popular Pressure-pressure From Below, From The Great Mass Of People.

Life Is Hard? True - But Let's Love It Anyhow, Though It Breaks Every Bone In Our Bodies.

I Want My Body To Help Fertilize The Growth Of A Cactus Or Cliff Rose Or Sagebrush Or Tree.

The Rifle And Handgun Are 'equalizers' -- The Weapons Of A Democracy. Tanks And Bombers Represent Dictatorship.

Writers Should Avoid The Academy. When A Writer Begins To Accept Pay For Talking About Words, We Know What He Will Produce Soon: Nothing But Words.

I've Wrecked And Ravaged Half My Life In The Pursuit Of Women, And I Suffer The Pangs Of About Seventeen Regrets -- The Seventeen Who Got Away.

I Now Find The Most Marvelous Things In The Everyday, The Ordinary, The Common, The Simple And Tangible.

Baseball Serves As A Good Model For Democracy In Action: Every Player Is Equally Important And Each Has A Chance To Be A Hero.

To Meet God Or Medusa Face To Face, Even If It Means Risking Everything Human In Myself. I Dream Of A Hard And Brutal Mysticism In Which The Naked Self Merges With The Nonhuman World And Yet Somehow Survives Still Intact Individual, Separate. Paradox And Bedrock.

In Social Institutions, The Whole Is Always Less Than The Sum Of Its Parts. There Will Never Be A State As Good As Its People, Or A Church Worthy Of Its Congregation, Or A University Equal To Its Faculty And Students.

There Never Was A Good War Or A Bad Revolution.

There Are Only Two Kinds Of Books -- Good Books And The Others. The Good Are Winnowed From The Bad Through The Democracy Of Time.

Saving The World Is Only A Hobby. Most Of The Time I Do Nothing.

God Is Love? Not Bloody Likely.

A Mother's Sorrow Is More True, Honorable, And Beautiful Than The Detachment Of The Sage.

Where All Think Alike There Is Little Danger Of Innovation.

Thought Provoking

A Society That Feels Itself Too Poor To Afford The Preservation Of Wilderness Is Not Worthy Of The Name Civilization.

But It Is A Writer's Duty To Write And Speak And Record The Truth, Always The Truth, No Matter Whom May Be Offended.

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.

The Distrust Of Wit Is The Beginning Of Tyranny.

A House Built On Greed Cannot Long Endure.

If You Feel That You Must Suffer, Then Plan Your Suffering Carefully -- As You Choose Your Dreams, As You Conceive Your Ancestors.

Anarchism? You Bet Your Sweet Betsy. The Only Cure For The Ills Of Democracy Is More Democracy. Much More.

Abolition Of A Woman's Right To Abortion, When And If She Wants It, Amounts To Compulsory Maternity: A Form Of Rape By The State.

Come With Me, The River Said, Close Your Eyes And Quiet Your Limbs And Float With Me Into The Wonder And Mystery Of The Canyons, See The Unknown And The Little Known, Look Upon The Stone Gods Face To Face, See Medusa, Drink My Waters, Hear My Song, Feel My Power, Come Along And Drift With Me Toward The Distant, Ultimate And Legendary Sea.

Jack Kerouac, Like A Sick Refrigerator, Worked Too Hard At Keeping Cool And Died On His Mama's Lap From Alcohol And Infantilism.

It Is Not Enough To Understand The Natural World; The Point Is To Defend And Preserve It.

I, Too, Believe In Fidelity. But How Can I Be True To One Woman Without Being False To All The Others?

Anarchism Is Democracy Taken Seriously.

Christian Theology: Nothing So Grotesque Could Possibly Be True.

I'm In Favor Of Animal Liberation. Why? Because I'm An Animal.

No Man Is Wise Enough To Be Another Man's Master. Each Man's As Good As The Next -- If Not A Damn Sight Better.

Literary Critics, Like A Herd Of Cows Or A School Of Fish, Always Face In The Same Direction, Obeying That Love For Unity That Every Critic Requires.

If Industrial Man Continues To Multiply His Numbers And Expand His Operations He Will Succeed In His Apparent Intention, To Seal Himself Off From The Natural And Isolate Himself Within A Synthetic Prison Of His Own Making.

I Believe That There Is A Kind Of Poetry, Even A Kind Of Truth, In Simple Fact.

In The End, For All Our Differences And Conflicts, Most Women And Men Share The Same Food, Work, Shelter, Bed, Life, Joy, Anguish, And Fate. We Need Each Other.

A Critic Is To An Author As A Fungus To An Oak.

In The Dog-eat-dog Economy, The Doberman Is Boss.

The Hawk's Cry Is As Sharp As Its Beak.

The Moral Duty Of The Free Writer Is To Begin His Work At Home: To Be A Critic Of His Own Community, His Own Country, His Own Government, His Own Culture. The More Freedom The Writer Possesses, The Greater The Moral Obligation To Play The Role Of Critic.

Anywhere, Anytime, I'd Sacrifice The Finest Nuance For A Laugh, The Most Elegant Trope For A Smile.

Going To Bed With Gertrude Stein, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Susan Sontag, Or Margaret Thatcher: There Are Some Things One Prefers Neither To Do Nor To Have Done.

The Longest Journey Begins With A Single Step, Not With A Turn Of The Ignition Key.

I Took The Other Road, All Right, But Only Because It Was The Easy Road For Me, The Way I Wanted To Go. If I've Encountered Some Unnecessary Resistance That's Because Most Of The Traffic Is Going The Other Way.

May Your Trails Be Dim, Lonesome, Stony, Narrow, Winding And Only Slightly Uphill. May The Wind Bring Rain For The Slickrock Potholes Fourteen Miles On The Other Side Of Yonder Blue Ridge. May God's Dog Serenade Your Campfire, May The Rattlesnake And The Screech Owl Amuse Your Reverie, May The Great Sun Dazzle Your Eyes By Day And The Great Bear Watch Over You By Night.

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.

Truth Is Merely Common Sense, Say The Naive Realist. Really? Then Where, Precisely, Is The Location Of--a Rainbow? In The Air? In The Eye? In Between? Or Somewhere Else?

Salome Had But Seven Veils; The Artist Has A Thousand.

The Dog's Life Is A Good Life, For A Dog.

Paradise Is The Here And Now, The Actual, Tangible, Dogmatically Real Earth On Which We Stand. Yes, God Bless America, The Earth Upon Which We Stand.

A Patriot Must Always Be Ready To Defend His Country Against His Government.

A Rancher Is A Farmer Who Farms The Public Lands With A Herd Of Four-legged Lawn Mowers.

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.

The World Is Older And Bigger Than We Are. This Is A Hard Truth For Some Folks To Swallow.

Our Suicidal Poets (plath, Berryman, Lowell, Jarrell, Et Al.) Spent Too Much Of Their Lives Inside Rooms And Classrooms When They Should Have Been Trudging Up Mountains, Slogging Through Swamps, Rowing Down Rivers. The Indoor Life Is The Next Best Thing To Premature Burial.

This Is The Most Beautiful Place On Earth. There Are Many Such Places. Every Man, Every Woman, Carries In Heart And Mind The Image Of The Ideal Place, The Right Place, The One True Home, Known Or Unknown, Actual Or Visionary.

Belief? What Do I Believe In? I Believe In Sun. In Rock. In The Dogma Of The Sun And The Doctrine Of The Rock. I Believe In Blood, Fire, Woman, Rivers, Eagles, Storm, Drums, Flutes, Banjos, And Broom-tailed Horses.

There Has Never Been A Day In My Life When I Was Not In Love.

Three Words Remain That Can Yet Stir The Blood Of Man: The Word 'rebellion'; The Word 'revolt'; The Word 'revolution'.

Nobody Seems More Obsessed By Diet Than Our Antimaterialist, Otherworldly, New Age, Spiritual Types. But If The Material World Is Merely Illusion, An Honest Guru Should As Content With Budweiser And Bratwurst As With Raw Carrot Juice, Tofu, And Seaweed Slime.

Jesus Don't Walk On Water No More; His Feet Leak.

Concrete Is Heavy; Iron Is Hard - But The Grass Will Prevail.

An Economic System Which Can Only Expand Or Expire Must Be False To All That Is Human.

There Is Beauty, Heartbreaking Beauty, Everywhere.

Beauty Everywhere

Most Of My Wandering In The Desert I've Done Alone. Not So Much From Choice As From Necessity - I Generally Prefer To Go Into Places Where No One Else Wants To Go. I Find That In Contemplating The Natural World My Pleasure Is Greater If There Are Not Too Many Others Contemplating It With Me, At The Same Time.

Life Is Unfair. And It's Not Fair That Life Is Unfair.

In The First Place You Can't See Anything From A Car; You've Got To Get Out Of The Goddamned Contraption And Walk, Better Yet Crawl, On Hands And Knees, Over The Sandstone And Through The Thornbush And Cactus. When Traces Of Blood Begin To Mark Your Trail You'll Begin To See Something, Maybe. Probably Not.

In The American Southwest, I Began A Lifelong Love Affair With A Pile Of Rock.

There's Another Disadvantage To The Use Of The Flashlight: Like Many Other Mechanical Gadgets It Tends To Separate A Man From The World Around Him. If I Switch It On My Eyes Adapt To It And I Can See Only The Small Pool Of Light It Makes In Front Of Me; I Am Isolated. Leaving The Flashlight In My Pocket Where It Belongs, I Remain A Part Of The Environment I Walk Through And My Vision Though Limited Has No Sharp Or Definite Boundary.

I Have Found Through Trial And Error That I Work Best Under Duress. In Fact I Work Only Under Duress.

Trial And Error

Lightning Streaks Like Gunfire Through The Clouds, Volleys Of Thunder Shake The Air.

In A Nation Of Sheep, One Brave Man Forms A Majority.

The Earth Is Real. Only A Fool, Milking His Cow, Denies The Cow's Reality.

The Developers And Entrepreneurs Must Somehow Be Taught A New Vocabulary Of Values.

The Ready Availability Of Suicide, Like Sex And Alcohol, Is One Of Life's Basic Consolations.

Might Does Not Make Right But It Sure Makes What Is.

I'm A Humanist; I'd Rather Kill A Man Than A Snake.

Girls, Like Flowers, Bloom But Once. But Once Is Enough.

The Best American Writers Have Come From The Hinterlands -- Mark Twain, Theodore Dreiser, Jack London, Hemingway, Faulkner, Wolfe, Steinbeck. Most Of Them Never Even Went To College.

Our Job Is To Record, Each In His Own Way, This World Of Light And Shadow And Time That Will Never Come Again Exactly As It Is Today.

I Find More And More, As I Grow Older, That I Prefer Women To Men, Children To Adults, Animals To Humans.... And Rocks To Living Things? No, I'm Not That Old Yet.

Susan Sontag: What She Really Wanted, Throughout Her Career, Was To Grow Up To Be A Frenchman.

Our Culture Runs On Coffee And Gasoline, The First Often Tasting Like The Second.

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.

A Cowboy Is A Hired Hand On The Middle Of A Horse Contemplating The Hind End Of A Cow.

Be As I Am - A Reluctant Enthusiast....a Part-time Crusader, A Half-hearted Fanatic....so Get Out There And Hunt And Fish And Mess Around With Your Friends, Ramble Out Yonder And Explore The Forests, Climb The Mountains, Bag The Peaks, Run The Rivers, Breathe Deep Of That Yet Sweet And Lucid Air, Sit Quietly For A While And Contemplate The Precious Stillness, The Lovely, Mysterious, And Awesome Space.

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.

Homosexuality, Like Androgyny, Might Be An Instinctive Racial Response To Overpopulation, Crowding, And Stress. Both Flourish When Empire Reaches Its Apogee.

The Absurd Vanity Of Metaphysicians Who Like To Imagine That They Create The World By Thinking About It.

Nearly All Of Latin America, From Chile To Mexico, Is One Long Rack Of Torture. Financed, Equipped, And Refined By The U.s. Government.

Wilderness Is Not A Luxury But A Necessity Of The Human Spirit.

The Function Of An Ideal Is Not To Be Realized But, Like That Of The North Star, To Serve As A Guiding Point.

A Journey Into The Wilderness Is The Freest, Cheapest, Most Nonprivileged Of Pleasures. Anyone With Two Legs And The Price Of A Pair Of Army Surplus Combat Boots May Enter.

A Man Without Passion Would Be Like A Body Without A Soul. Or Even More Grotesque, Like A Soul Without A Body.

Under The Desert Sun, In The Dogmatic Clarity, The Fables Of Theology And The Myths Of Classical Philosophy Dissolve Like Mist. The Air Is Clean, The Rock Cuts Cruelly Into Flesh; Shatter The Rock And The Odor Of Flint Rises To Your Nostrils, Bitter And Sharp. Whirlwinds Dance Across The Salt Flats, A Pillar Of Dust By Day; The Thornbush Breaks Into Flame At Night. What Does It Mean? It Means Nothing. It Is As It Is And Has No Need For Meaning. The Desert Lies Beneath And Soars Beyond Any Possible Human Qualification. Therefore, Sublime.

Places: A Cold, Bleak, Lonely Day On The Rim At Muley Point, Utah. And The Heart-cracking Loveliness Of The Blood-smeared, Bitter, Incomprehensible Slaughterhouse Of A World.

A Venturesome Minority Will Always Be Eager To Set Off On Their Own, And No Obstacles Should Be Placed In Their Path; Let Them Take Risks, For Godsake, Let Them Get Lost, Sunburnt, Stranded, Drowned, Eaten By Bears, Buried Alive Under Avalanches - That Is The Right And Privilege Of Any Free American.

I Am Hopeful, Though Not Full Of Hope, And The Only Reason I Don't Believe In Happy Endings Is Because I Don't Believe In Endings.

Whatever We Cannot Easily Understand We Call God; This Saves Much Wear And Tear On The Brain Tissues.

My Books Always Make The Best-seller Lists In Wolf Hole, Arizona, And Hanksville, Utah.

I Would Give Ten Years Off The Beginning Of My Life To See, Only Once, Tyrannosaurus Rex Come Rearing Up From The Elms Of Central Park, A Morgan Police Horse Screaming In Its Jaws. We Can Never Have Enough Of Nature.

Beware The Writer Who Always Encloses The Word *reality* In Quotation Marks: He's Trying To Slip Something Over On You. Or Into You.

Quotation Marks

Every Writer Has His Favorite Coterie Of Enemies: Mine Is The East Coast Literati -- Those Prep School Playmates And Their Ivy League Colleagues.

There Are Two Kinds Of People I Cannot Abide: Bigots And Any Well-organized Ethnic Group.

Life Is Already Too Short To Waste On Speed.

Wealth And How To Achieve It: Let Us Define The Wealthy Man As He Who Has Everything He Desires. How To Reach That Happy Condition? Two Ways

The Artist's Job? To Be A Miracle Worker: Make The Blind See, The Dull Feel, The Dead To Live.

What Is Reason? Knowledge Informed By Sympathy, Intelligence In The Arms Of Love.

Balance, That's The Secret. Moderate Extremism. The Best Of Both Worlds.

Why I Oppose The Nuclear-arms Race: I Prefer The Human Race.

Romanticism Was More Than Merely An Alternative To A Sterile Classicism; Romanticism Made Possible, Especially In Art, A Great Expansion Of The Human Consciousness.

Humility Is A Virtue When You Have No Other.

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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