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I Am Pleased Enough With The Surfaces - In Fact They Alone Seem To Me To Be Of Much Importance. Such Things For Example As The Grasp Of A Child's Hand In Your Own, The Flavor Of An Apple, The Embrace Of A Friend Or Lover, The Silk Of A Girl's Thigh, The Sunlight On The Rock And Leaves, The Feel Of Music, The Bark Of A Tree, The Abrasion Of Granite And Sand, The Plunge Of Clear Water Into A Pool, The Face Of The Wind - What Else Is There? What Else Do We Need?

-Edward Abbey

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I Am Pleased Enough

Edward Abbey

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I Am Pleased Enough With The Surfaces - In Fact They Alone Seem To Me To Be Of Much Importance. Such Things For Example As The Grasp Of A Child's Hand In Your Own, The Flavor Of An Apple, The Embrace Of A Friend Or Lover, The Silk Of A Girl's Thigh, The Sunlight On The Rock And Leaves, The Feel Of Music, The Bark Of A Tree, The Abrasion Of Granite And Sand, The Plunge Of Clear Water Into A Pool, The Face Of The Wind - What Else Is There? What Else Do We Need?

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All Serious Writers Want The Obvious Rewards: Fame, Money, Women, Love -- And Most Of All, An Audience!

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

John Updike: Our Greatest Suburban Chic-boutique Man Of Letters. A Smug And Fatal Complacency Has Stunted His Growth Beyond Hope Of Surgical Repair. Not Enough Passion In His Collected Works To Generate Steam In A Beer Can. Nevertheless, He Is Considered By Some Critics To Be America's Finest *living* Author: Hold A Chilled Mirror To His Lips And You Will See, Presently, A Fine And Dewy Moisture Condensing -- Like A Faery Breath! -- Upon The Glass.

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A Crude Meal, No Doubt, But The Best Of All Sauces Is Hunger.

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Native American

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Trial And Error

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You Can't Belay A Man Who's Falling In Love.

Falling In Love

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My Sole Literary Ambition Is To Write One Good Novel, Then Retire To My Hut In The Desert, Assume The Lotus Position, Compose My Mind And Senses, And Sink Into Meditation, Contemplating My Novel.

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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.

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?

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

Music Endures And Ages Far Better Than Books. Books, Made Of Words, Are Unavoidably Attached To Ideas, Events, Conflict, And History, But Music Has The Power To Transcend Time. At Least For A Time. Palestrina Sounds As Fresh Today As He Did In 1555, But Dante, Only Three Centuries Older, Already Smells Of The Archaic, The Medieval, The Catacombs.

I Have Been Called A Curmudgeon, Which My Obsolescent Dictionary Defines As A "surly, Illmannered, Badtempered Fellow." ... Nowadays, Curmudgeon Is Likely To Refer To Anyone Who Hates Hypocrisy, Cant, Sham, Dogmatic Ideologies, The Pretenses And Evasions Of Euphemism, And Has The Nerve To Point Out Unpleasant Facts And Takes The Trouble To Impale These Sins On The Skewer Of Humor And Roast Them Over The Fires Of Empiric Fact, Common Sense, And Native Intelligence. In This Nation Of Bleating Sheep And Braying Jackasses, It Then Becomes An Honor To Be Labeled Curmudgeon.

A Good Philosopher Is One Who Does Not Take Ideas Seriously.

It Seems Clear At Last That Our Love For The Natural World-nature-is The Only Means By Which We Can Requite God's Obvious Love For It.

In Order To Write A Book, It Is Necessary To Sit Down (or Stand Up) And Write. Therein Lies The Difficulty.

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

‎"if My Decomposing Carcass Helps Nourish The Roots Of A Juniper Tree Or The Wings Of A Vulture--that Is Immortality Enough For Me. And As Much As Anyone Deserves." E.abbey

I Come More And More To The Conclusion That Wilderness, In America Or Anywhere Else, Is The Only Thing Left That Is Worth Saving.

A True Libertarian Supports Free Enterprise, Opposes Big Business; Supports Local Self-government, Opposes The Nation-state; Supports The National Rifle Association, Opposes The Pentagon.

We Are Slaves In The Sense That We Depend For Our Daily Survival Upon An Expand-or-expire Agro-industrial Empire—a Crackpot Machine—that The Specialists Cannot Comprehend And The Managers Cannot Manage. Which Is, Furthermore, Devouring World Resources At An Exponential Rate. We Are, Most Of Us, Dependent Employees. …edward Abbey (1927-1989)

Our Big Social Institutions Do Not Reflect Human Nature; They Distort It.

The Result Of This Bestial Lust Is An Indiscriminate And Promiscuous Splaying Of All Of My Energies- Wanting All, I Accomplish Nothing; Desiring Everything, I Satisfy Nothing And Am Satisfied By Nothing.

Accomplish Nothing

Those Art Lovers Who Pride Themselves Mostly On *taste* Usually Possess No Other Talent.

Life Imitates Art -- But Badly.

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

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.

Music Is A Savage Art, A Measured Madness.

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.

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No Man-made Structure In All Of American History Has Been Hated So Much, By So Many, For So Long, With Such Good Reason, As That Glen Canyon Dam At Page, Arizona, Shithead Capital Of Coconino County.

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All Governments Require Enemy Governments.

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.

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What Ideal, Immutable Platonic Cloud Could Equal The Beauty And Perfection Of Any Ordinary Everyday Cloud Floating Over, Say, Tuba City, Arizona, On A Hot Day In June?

You Long For Success? Start At The Bottom; Dig Down.

I've Never Yet Read A Review Of One Of My Own Books That I Couldn't Have Written Much Better Myself.

A Cowboy Is A Farm Boy In Leather Britches And A Comical Hat.

The Greater Your Dreams, The More Terrible Your Nightmares.

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

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Simplicity Is Always A Virtue. One Kid On A Riverbank Working Out A Stephen Foster Tune On His New Harmonica Heard From The Correct Esthetic Distance Projects More Magic And Power Than The Entire Vienna Philharmonic And Chorus Laboring (once Again) Through The Mozart Requiem Or Bach's B Minor Mass.

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

My Aunt Ida At Age Eighty-three: 'yeah,' She Said, 'i'll Be Dead Pretty Soon. And Frankly, I Don't Give A Damn.'

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

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

Wilderness Begins In The Human Mind.

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