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The Canyon Country Does Not Always Inspire Love. To Many It Appears Barren, Hostile, Repellent - A Fearsome Mostly Waterless Land Of Rock And Heat, Sand Dunes And Quicksand, Cactus, Thornbrush, Scorpion, Rattlesnake, And Agaraphobic Distances. To Those Who See Our Land In That Manner, The Best Reply Is, Yes, You Are Right, It Is A Dangerous And Terrible Place. Enter At Your Own Risk. Carry Water. Avoid The Noonday Sun. Try To Ignore The Vultures. Pray Frequently.

-Edward Abbey

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The Canyon Country Does

Edward Abbey

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The Canyon Country Does Not Always Inspire Love. To Many It Appears Barren, Hostile, Repellent - A Fearsome Mostly Waterless Land Of Rock And Heat, Sand Dunes And Quicksand, Cactus, Thornbrush, Scorpion, Rattlesnake, And Agaraphobic Distances. To Those Who See Our Land In That Manner, The Best Reply Is, Yes, You Are Right, It Is A Dangerous And Terrible Place. Enter At Your Own Risk. Carry Water. Avoid The Noonday Sun. Try To Ignore The Vultures. Pray Frequently.

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When The Philosopher's Argument Becomes Tedious, Complicated, And Opaque, It Is Usually A Sign That He Is Attempting To Prove As True To The Intellect What Is Plainly False To Common Sense.

The Canyon Country Does Not Always Inspire Love. To Many It Appears Barren, Hostile, Repellent - A Fearsome Mostly Waterless Land Of Rock And Heat, Sand Dunes And Quicksand, Cactus, Thornbrush, Scorpion, Rattlesnake, And Agaraphobic Distances. To Those Who See Our Land In That Manner, The Best Reply Is, Yes, You Are Right, It Is A Dangerous And Terrible Place. Enter At Your Own Risk. Carry Water. Avoid The Noonday Sun. Try To Ignore The Vultures. Pray Frequently.

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.

One Of The Pleasant Things About Small Town Life Is That Everyone, Whether Rich Or Poor, Liked Or Disliked, Has Some Kind Of A Role And Place In The Community. I Never Felt That Living In A City - As I Once Did For A Couple Of Years.

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.

As War And Government Prove, Insanity Is The Most Contagious Of Diseases.

Grown Men Do Not Need Leaders.

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

Terrorism: Deadly Violence Against Humans And Other Living Things, Usually Conducted By Government Against Its Own People.

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Style: There Is Something In Too Much Verbal Felicity (as In Joyce Or Nabokov Or Borges) That Can Betray The Writer Into Technique For The Sake Of Technique.

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.

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We Can Have Wilderness Without Freedom; We Can Have Wilderness Without Human Life At All, But We Cannot Have Freedom Without Wilderness, We Cannot Have Freedom Without Leagues Of Open Space Beyond The Cities, Where Boys And Girls, Men And Women, Can Live At Least Part Of Their Lives Under No Control But Their Own Desires And Abilities, Free From Any And All Direct Administration By Their Fellow Men.

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.

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.

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

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

Those Who Dream Of The Joys Of Living In A Space Colony Should Live In A Space Colony.

There's Nothing So Obscene And Depressing As An American Christmas.

Government Should Be Weak, Amateurish And Ridiculous. At Present, It Fulfills Only A Third Of The Role.

Climbing K2 Or Floating The Grand Canyon In An Inner Tube; There Are Some Things One Would Rather Have Done Than Do.

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.

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

Most New Books Drop Immediately Into The Oblivion They So Richly Deserve.

Music Is A Savage Art, A Measured Madness.

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)

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

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

In Everything But Brains And Brawn, Women Are Vastly Superior To Men. A Different Race.

Desire, Said The Buddha, Is The Cause Of Suffering. But Without Desire, What Delight?

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

We Know This Apodictic Rock Beneath Our Feet. That Dogmatic Sun Above Our Heads. The World Of Dreams, The Agony Of Love And The Foresight Of Death. That Is All We Know. And All We Need To Know? Challenge That Statement.

Preacher To Me: 'a Dollar For The Lord, Brother?' Me To Preacher: 'that's All Right, I'm Headed His Way. I'll Give It To Him When I See Him.'

Anyone Not Paranoid In This World Must Be Crazy. . . . Speaking Of Paranoia, It's True That I Do Not Know Exactly Who My Enemies Are. But That Of Course Is Exactly Why I'm Paranoid.

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Of Course I Litter The Public Highway. Every Chance I Get. After All, It's Not The Beer Cans That Are Ugly; It's The Highway That Is Ugly.

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The Consolation Of Reading Biography: Most Great Men Have Led Lives Even More Miserable Than Our Own.

Reply To Plato: I Seen Horses I Seen Cows I Haint Never Yet Seen Horsiness Nor That There Bovinity Neither.

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A Pretty Girl Can Do No Wrong.

How Long Does It Take To Write A Good Book? All Of The Years That You've Lived.

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We Know So Very Little About This Strange Planet We Live On, This Haunted World Where All Answers Lead Only To More Mystery.

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A Life Without Tragedy Would Not Be Worth Living.

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

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Do I Believe In Ghosts? I Believe In The Ghosts That Haunt The Human Mind.

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

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

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Who Needs Astrology? The Wise Man Gets By On Fortune Cookies.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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Wilderness Begins In The Human Mind.

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

There Is No Force More Potent In The Modern World Than Stupidity Fueled By Greed.

Opera: I Like It, Except For All Those Howling Sopranos And Caterwauling Tenors. (why Can't Tenors Sing Like Men?)

Whenever I Read _time_ Or _newsweek_ Or Such Magazines, I Wash My Hands Afterward. But How To Wash Off The Small But Odious Stain Such Reading Leaves On The Mind?

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

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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.

The Writer Concerned More With Technique Than Truth Becomes A Technician, Not An Artist.

A Drink A Day Keeps The Shrink Away.

All We Have, It Seems To Me, Is The Beauty Of Art And Nature And Life, And The Love Which That Beauty Inspires.

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Beware Of The Man Who Has No Enemies.

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

Somewhere In The Depths Of Solitude, Beyond Wilderness And Freedom, Lay The Trap Of Madness.

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

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.

I Am Delighted, One More Time, By The Daring Of My Species And The Audacity Of Our Flying Machines. There Is Poetry And Music In Our Technology, A Beauty As Touching As That Of Eagle, Moss Campion, Raven Or Yonder Limestone Boulder Shining Under The Arctic Sun.

Is The Archbishop's Blessing Any More Meaningful Than The Politician's Handshake? The Come, They Go, With Bigger Things Than Us On Their Minds.

Man Was Created To Complete The Horse.

Cold Morning On Aztec Peak Fire Lookout. First, Build Fire In Old Stove. Second, Start Coffee. Then, Heat Up Last Night's Pork Chops And Spinach For Breakfast. Why Not? And Why The Hell Not?

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

Falling In Love

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

Guns Don't Kill People; People Kill People. Of Course, People With Guns Kill More People. But That's Only Natural. It's Hard. But It's Fair.

America My Country: Last Nation On Earth To Abolish Human Slavery; First Of All Nations To Drop The Nuclear Bomb On Our Fellow Human Beings.

The Feminists Have A Legitimate Grievance. But So Does Everyone Else.

Charity Should Be Spontaneous. Calculated Altruism Is An Affront.

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

Within Minutes My 115-mile Walk Through The Desert Hills Becomes A Thing Apart, A Disjunct Reality On The Far Side Of A Bottomless Abyss, Immediately Beyond Physical Recollection.but It's All Still There In My Heart And Soul. The Walk, The Hills, The Sky, The Solitary Pain And Pleasure-they Will Grow Larger, Sweeter, Lovelier In The Days To Come, Like A Treasure Found And Then, Voluntarily, Surrendered. Returned To The Mountains With My Blessing. It Leaves A Golden Glowing On The Mind.

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

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

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.

The Function Of Football, Soccer, Basketball And Other Passion-sports In Modern Industrial Society Is The Transference Of Boredom, Frustration, Anger And Rage Into Socially Acceptable Forms Of Combat. A Temporary Substitute For War; For Nationalism; Identification With Something Bigger Than The Self.

Cowboys Make Better Lovers: Ask Any Cow.

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

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

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

The Critics Say That Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony Has No Form. They Are Wrong; It Has The Form Of Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony.

Doctrines Like Christianity Or Islam Or Marxism Require Unanimity Of Belief. One Dissenter Casts Doubt On The Creed Of Millions.

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

In The Afternoon I Watch The Clouds Drift Past The Bald Peak Of Mount Tukuhnikivats. (someone Has To Do It.)

Simplicity Is Always A Virtue.

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.

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

We Live In A Society In Which It Is Normal To Be Sick; And Sick To Be Abnormal.

Truth Is Always The Enemy Of Power. And Power The Enemy Of Truth.

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

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

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

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

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

Freedom Begins Between The Ears.

When The Writer Has Done His Best, He Then Should Proceed To Do His Second Best.

Anarchy Works. Italy Has Proved It For A Thousand Years.

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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War? The One War I'd Be Happy To Join Is The War Against Officers.

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.

In Art As In Life, Form And Subject, Body And Soul, Are One.

Except For The Scale Of The Operation, There Was Nothing Unusual About Hitler's Massacre Of The Jews. Genocide's An Old Tradition, As Human As Mother Love Or Cherry Pie.

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

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Despair Leads To Boredom, Electronic Games, Computer Hacking, Poetry And Other Bad Habits.

I Am Happy To Be A Regional Writer. My Region Is The American West, Old Mexico, West Virginia, New York, Europe, Australia, The Human Heart, And The Male Groin.

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Anarchism Is Not A Romantic Fable But The Hardheaded Realization, Based On Five Thousand Years Of Experience, That We Cannot Entrust The Management Of Our Lives To Kings, Priests, Politicians, Generals, And County Commissioners.

The True, Unacknowledged Purpose Of Capital Punishment Is To Inspire Fear And Awe -- Fear And Awe Of The State.

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

I Intend To Be Good For The Rest Of My Natural Life -- If I Live That Long.

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

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

The Industrial Way Of Life Leads To The Industrial Way Of Death. From Shiloh To Dachau, From Antietam To Stalingrad, From Hiroshima To Vietnam And Afghanistan, The Great Specialty Of Industry And Technology Has Been The Mass Production Of Human Corpses.

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

One Thing More Dangerous Than Getting Between A Grizzly Sow And Her Cub Is Getting Between A Businessman And A Dollar Bill.

Belief In The Supernatural Reflects A Failure Of The Imagination.

In The Modern World, All Literary Art Is Necessarily Political -- Especially That Which Pretends Not To Be.

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.

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.

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.

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

How To Overthrow The System: Brew Your Own Beer; Kick In Your Tee Vee; Kill Your Own Beef; Build Your Own Cabin And Piss Off The Front Porch Whenever You Bloody Well Feel Like It.

Anarchism Is Democracy Taken Seriously.

Capitalism: Nothing So Mean Could Be Right. Greed Is The Ugliest Of The Capital Sins.

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.

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

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

Music Begins Where Words Leave Off. Music Expresses The Inexpressible. If There Is A Kingdom Of Heaven, It Lies In Music.

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

I Am My Brother's Keeper, Says The Chickenshit Liberal. Perhaps He Does Not Realize That He Now Has More Than 2 1/2 Billion Brothers.

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Native American

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.

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

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