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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.

-Edward Abbey

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I Wait. Now The

Edward Abbey

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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.

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In The World Of Words, One Of My Best-loved Tribes Is The Diatribe.

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.

Science Transcends Mere Politics. As Recent History Demonstrates, Scientists Are As Willing To Work For A Tojo, A Hitler, Or A Stalin As For The Free Nations Of The West.

Death Is Every Man's Final Critic. To Die Well You Must Live Bravely.

The Most Common Form Of Terrorism In The U.s.a. Is That Carried On By Bulldozers And Chainsaws. It Is Not Enough To Understand The Natural World; The Point Is To Defend And Preserve It. Sentiment Without Action Is The Ruin Of The Soul.

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

A Good Writer Must Have More Than Vin Rosé In His Veins, Use More Than Chablis For Ink.

The Response To My Books From My East Coast Friends Has Been Wildly Various, Running The Gamut From 'bad' To 'very Bad.' (is There Another Gamut?)

In America, As Elsewhere, The General Irritability Level Keeps Rising.

May Your Trails Be Crooked, Winding, Lonesome, Dangerous, Leading To The Most Amazing View. May Your Mountains Rise Into And Above The Clouds.

I Choose To Listen To The River For A While, Thinking River Thoughts, Before Joining The Night And The Stars.

For This World That Men Have Made, None Of Us Is Bad Enough. For The World That Made Us, None Is Good Enough.

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

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

My Loyalties Will Not Be Bound By National Borders, Or Confined In Time By One Nation's History, Or Limited In The Spiritual Dimension By One Language And Culture. I Pledge My Allegiance To The Damned Human Race, And My Everlasting Love To The Green Hills Of Earth, And My Intimations Of Glory To The Singing Stars, To The Very End Of Space And Time.

Democracy -- Rule By The People -- Sounds Like A Fine Thing; We Should Try It Sometime In America.

What Did Jesus Say To The Headwaiter At The Last Supper? 'separate Checks, Please.'

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.

In Metaphysics, The Notion That Earth And All That's On It Is A Mental Construct Is The Product Of People Who Spend Their Lives Inside Rooms. It Is An Indoor Philosophy.

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.

No Man Likes To Be Smoked Out Of His Hole In February.

Proverbs Save Us The Trouble Of Thinking. What We Call Folk Wisdom Is Often No More Than A Kind Of Expedient Stupidity.

Cowboys Make Better Lovers: Ask Any Cow.

Better A Cruel Truth Than A Comfortable Delusion.

Apuleius Married A Rich Widow, Then Wrote _the Golden Ass_.

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

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

Charity Should Be Spontaneous. Calculated Altruism Is An Affront.

Chastity Is More A State Of Mind Than Of Anatomy.

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?

When The Situation Is Hopeless, There's Nothing To Worry About.

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.

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

Counterpart To The Knee-jerk Liberal Is The New Knee-pad Conservative, Always Groveling Before The Rich And The Powerful.

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

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.

It May Be True That My Desk Here Is Really 'nothing But' A Transient Eddy Of Electrons In The Flux Of Universal Process. Nevertheless, I Find That It Continues To Support My Feet, My Revolver, And My Cigars All Day Long. What Happens When My Back Is Turned I Don't Know. Or Much Care. That's No Concern Of Mine.

The Fire. The Odor Of Burning Juniper Is The Sweetest Fragrance On The Face Of The Earth, In My Honest Judgment; I Doubt If All The Smoking Censers Of Dante's Paradise Could Equal It. One Breath Of Juniper Smoke, Like The Perfume Of Sagebrush After Rain, Evokes In Magical Catalysis, Like Certain Music, The Space And Light And Clarity And Piercing Strangeness Of The American West. Long May It Burn.

A Leader Leads From In Front, By The Power Of Example. A Ruler Pushes From Behind, By Means Of The Club, The Whip, The Power Of Fear.

Of All Bores, The Worst Is The Sparkling Bore.

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

Reincarnation? There Is Such A Thing. What Could Be More Mozartian Than The Nutcracker Suite?

Wilderness And Motors Are Incompatible And The Former Can Best Be Experienced, Understood And Enjoyed When The Machines Are Left Behind Where They Belong -- On The Superhighways And In The Parking Lots, On The Reservoirs And In The Marinas.

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

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

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.

If People Persist In Trespassing Upon The Grizzlies' Territory, We Must Accept The Fact That The Grizzlies, From Time To Time, Will Harvest A Few Trespassers.

Any Hack Can Safely Rail Away At Foreign Powers Beyond The Sea; But A Good Writer Is A Critic Of The Society He Lives In.

The Proustian Aquarium: Grotesque And Gorgeous Fish Drifting With Languid Fins Through A Subaqueous Medium Of Pale Violet Polluted Ink.

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

Everyone Should Learn A Manual Trade: It's Never Too Late To Become An Honest Person.

A Life Without Tragedy Would Not Be Worth Living.

God Is Love? Not Bloody Likely.

If The End Does Not Justify The Means - What Can?

Life Imitates Art -- But Badly.

It's True: Every Time You Kill An Elk, You're Saving Some Cow's Life.

If It's Knowledge And Wisdom You Want, Then Seek Out The Company Of Those Who Do Real Work For An Honest Purpose.

The Earth Is Not A Mechanism But An Organism, A Being With Its Own Life And Its Own Reasons, Where The Support And Sustenance Of The Human Animal Is Incidental. If Man In His Newfound Power And Vanity Persists In The Attempt To Remake The Planet In His Own Image, He Will Succeed Only In Destroying Himself - Not The Planet. The Earth Will Survive Our Most Ingenious Folly.

Vaughan Telecom Installers And Contractors Ensure The Highest Quality Service For Data And Network Cabling In Toronto And Gta Area.

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

And If The Computer Gives You Any Back Talk, Pour Some Well-sugared Office Coffee Into Its Evil Little Silicon Brain.

Defiance Is Beautiful. The Defiance Of Power, Especially Great Or Overwhelming Power, Exalts And Glorifies The Rebel.

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

Roosters: The Cry Of The Male Chicken Is The Most Barbaric Yawp In All Of Nature.

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Our Modern Industrial Economy Takes A Mountain Covered With Trees, Lakes, Running Streams And Transforms It Into A Mountain Of Junk, Garbage, Slime Pits, And Debris.

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.

Henry James Was Our Master Of Periphrasis -- The Fine Art Of Saying As Little As Possible In The Greatest Number Of Words.

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The Sexual Revolution Transformed The American West: Now Even Cowboys Can Get Laid.

Through Logic And Inference We Can Prove Anything. Therefore, Logic And Inference, In Contrast To Ordinary Daily Living Experience, Are Secondary Instruments Of Knowledge. Probably Tertiary.

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

If The World Is Irrational, We Can Never Know It -- Either It Or Its Irrationality.

Appearance Versus Reality? Appearance Is Reality, God Damn It!

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Great Art Is Indefinable But That's All Right; It Exists Anyway.

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

Love Implies Anger. The Man Who Is Angered By Nothing Cares About Nothing.

The Rich Are Not Very Nice. That's Why They're Rich.

Recorded History Is Largely An Account Of The Crimes And Disasters Committed By Banal Little Men At The Levers Of Imperial Machines.

A City Man Is A Home Anywhere, For All Big Cities Are Much Alike. But A Country Man Has A Place Where He Belongs, Where He Always Returns, And Where, When The Time Comes, He Is Willing To Die.

I Am Not An Atheist But An Earthiest. Be True To The Earth.

The Ever-rising Cost Of Living: Someday Soon, The Corporate Technicians Will Be Locking Meters On Our Noses And Charging Us A Royalty On The Air We Breathe.

Suicide: Don't Knock It If You Ain't Tried It.

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.

Belief In God? An Afterlife? I Believe In Rock: This Apodictic Rock Beneath My Feet.

If You're Never Ridden A Fast Horse At A Dead Run Across A Desert Valley At Dawn, Be Of Good Cheer: You've Only Missed Out On One Half Of Life.

Night And Day The River Flows. If Time Is The Mind Of Space, The River Is The Soul Of The Desert. Brave Boatmen Come, They Go, They Die, The Voyage Flows On Forever. We Are All Canyoneers. We Are All Passengers On This Little Mossy Ship, This Delicate Dory Sailing Round The Sun That Humans Call The Earth. Joy, Shipmates, Joy.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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The New Age Orgy: The Flesh Was Willing But The Spirit's Weak.

I’m Tired Of Doing What I Don’t Want To Do To Live The Way I Don’t Want To Live.

Why Is It That The Destruction Of Something Created By Humans Is Called Vandalism, Yet The Destruction Of Something Created By God Is Called Development?

It Is The Difference Between Men And Women, Not The Sameness, That Creates The Tension And The Delight.

James Joyce Buried Himself In His Great Work. _finnegan's Wake_ Is His Monument And His Tombstone. A Dead End.

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.

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.

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

The Best Argument For Christianity Is The Gregorian Chant. Listening To That Music, One Can Believe Anything -- While The Music Lasts.

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

In The Modern Technoindustrial Culture, It Is Possible To Proceed From Infancy Into Senility Without Ever Knowing Manhood.

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

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

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

One Thing Worse Than Self-hatred Is Chiggers.

England Has Never Enjoyed A Genuine Social Revolution. Maybe That's What's Wrong With That Dear, Tepid, Vapid, Insipid, Stuffy, Little Country.

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.

Late In August The Lure Of The Mountains Becomes Irresistible. Seared By The Everlasting Sunfire, I Want To See Running Water Again, Embrace A Pine Tree, Cut My Initials In The Bark Of An Aspen, Get Bit By A Mosquito, See A Mountain Bluebird, Find A Big Blue Columbine, Get Lost In The Firs, Hike Above Timberline, Sunbathe On Snow And Eat Some Ice, Climb The Rocks And Stand In The Wind At The Top Of The World On The Peak Of Tukuhnikivats.

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.

Music Clouds The Intellect But Clarifies The Heart.

Growth For The Sake Of Growth Is The Ideology Of The Cancer Cell.

Freedom Begins Between The Ears.

What Our Economists Call A Depressed Area Almost Always Turns Out To Be A Cleaner, Freer, More Livable Place Than Most.

How Did Haydn And Mozart Produce Such Vast Quantities Of Formally Perfect Art? They Worked From A Perfect Formula. In Music, Beethoven Was The Great Emancipator.

The Distrust Of Wit Is The Beginning Of Tyranny.

As Mark Twain Said, 'i Love Wagner -- If Only They'd Cut Out All That Damned Singing!'

The Duty Of A Patriot Is To Protect His Country From Its Government.

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

Edmund Wilson Was Our Greatest American Literary Critic Because He Was More Than A Literary Critic: He Was A Fearless, Even Radical Judge Of The Society He Lived In. (see, For Example, _a Piece Of My Mind_; _the Cold War And The Income Tax_; The Introduction To _patriotic Gore_.) Our Conventional Critics Cannot Forgive Him For Those Scandalous Lapses In Good Taste.

We Spend More Time Working For Our Labor-saving Machines Than They Do Working For Us.

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

Wilderness Is Not A Luxury But A Necessity Of The Human Spirit, And As Vital To Our Lives As Water And Good Bread. A Civilization Which Destroys What Little Remains Of The Wild, The Spare, The Original, Is Cutting Itself Off From Its Origins And Betraying The Principle Of Civilization Itself.

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.

A Writer Must Be Hard To Live With: When Not Working He Is Miserable, And When He Is Working He Is Obsessed.

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

I Wouldn't Trade A Good Horse For The Best Rolls-royce Ever Made -- Unless I Could Trade The Rolls For Two Good Horses.

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I'm A Fastidious Sort Of Fellow, Fond Of Watermelon And Buckbrush Nuts.

Say What You Like About My Bloody Murderous Government,' I Says, 'but Don't Insult Me Poor Bleedin' Country.

J. Edgar Hoover, J. Bracken Lee, J. Parnell Thomas, J. Paul Getty -- You Can Always Tell A Shithead By That Initial Initial.

Why Do I Live In The Desert? Because The Desert Is The *locus Dei*.

Though Men Now Possess The Power To Dominate And Exploit Every Corner Of The Natural World, Nothing In That Fact Implies That They Have The Right Or The Need To Do So.

Football Is A Game For Trained Apes. That, In Fact, Is What Most Of The Players Are -- Retarded Gorillas Wearing Helmets And Uniforms. The Only Thing More Debased Is The Surrounding Mob Of Drunken Monkeys Howling The Gorillas On.

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

Beware Of Your Wishes: They Will Probably Come True.

Men Love Their Ideas More Than Their Lives. And The More Preposterous The Idea, The More Eager They Are To Die For It. And To Kill For It.

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

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Life Is Already Too Short To Waste On Speed.

Saving The World Was Merely A Hobby. My *vocation* Has Been That Of Inspector Of Desert Water Holes.

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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.

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The Earth, Like The Sun, Like The Air, Belongs To Everyone - And To No One.

You Cannot Reshape Human Nature Without Mutilating Human Beings.

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We Need The Possibility Of Escape As Surely As We Need Hope.

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?

If There's Anyone Still Present Whom I've Failed To Insult . . . I Apologize.

Life Without Music Would Be An Intolerable Insult.

Life Without Music

Each Thing In Its Way, When True To Its Own Character, Is Equally Beautiful. (p 41)

Most Academic Economists Know Nothing Of Economy. In Fact, They Know Little Of Anything.

It Is Not An Easy Thing To Inflate A Dog.

Has Joy Any Survival Value In The Operations Of Evolution? I Suspect That It Does; I Suspect That The Morose And Fearful Are Doomed To Quick Extinction. Where There Is No Joy There Can Be No Courage; And Without Courage All Other Virtues Are Useless.

To Be Everywhere At Once Is To Be Nowhere Forever, If You Ask Me.

I Am An Enemy Of The State. But Isn't Everyone?

Humans Were Free Before The Word Freedom Became Necessary.

When The Biggest, Richest, Glassiest Buildings In Town Are The Banks, You Know That Town's In Trouble.

Be A Half-assed Crusader, A Part-time Fanatic. Don't Worry To Much About The Fate Of The World. Saving The World Is Only A Hobby. Get Out There And Enjoy The World, Your Girlfriend, Your Boyfriend, Husbands Wives; Climb Mountains, Run Rivers, Get Drunk, Do Whatever You Want To Do While You Can, Before It's Too Late.

What's The Difference Between The Lone Ranger And God? There Really Is A Lone Ranger.

Proust Again: One Can Only Wish That A Man With Such Powers Of Total Recall Had Led A Less Tedious Life, Moved Among Somewhat Livelier Circles.

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

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Where All Think Alike There Is Little Danger Of Innovation.

Thought Provoking

All Living Things On Earth Are Kindred.

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

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

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

Most Of Us Lead Lives Of Chaotic Improvisation From Day To Day, Bawling For Peace While Plunging Grimly Into Fresh Disorders.

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

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

Trial And Error

Writing On The Wall: Will Trade Three Blind Crabs For Two With No Teeth.

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

I Have Been A Lucky Man. But Someone Has To Be.

A House Built On Greed Cannot Long Endure.

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.

There Are No Vacant Lots In Nature.

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