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We Are Preoccupied With Time. If We Could Learn To Love Space As Deeply As We Are Now Obsessed With Time, We Might Discover A New Meaning In The Phrase To Live Like Men.

-Edward Abbey

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We Are Preoccupied With

Edward Abbey

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We Are Preoccupied With Time. If We Could Learn To Love Space As Deeply As We Are Now Obsessed With Time, We Might Discover A New Meaning In The Phrase To Live Like Men.

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It's All Still There In Heart And Soul. The Walk, The Hills, The Sky, The Solitary Pain And Pleasure-they Will Grow Larger, Sweeter, Lovelier In The Days And Years To Come.

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.

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

Humility Is A Virtue When You Have No Other.

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.

A Man's Duty? To Be Ready -- With Rifle Or Rood -- To Defend His Home When The Showdown Comes.

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

It Is Not The Writer's Task To Answer Questions But To Question Answers. To Be Impertinent, Insolent, And, If Necessary, Subversive.

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.

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

Books Are Like Eggs -- Best When Fresh.

Little Boys Love Machines; Girls Adore Horses; Grown-up Men And Women Like To Walk.

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

World Literature

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.

Those Who Fear Death Most Are Those Who Enjoy Life Least.

Vladimir Nabokov Was A Writer Who Cared Nothing For Music And Whose Favorite Sport Was The Pursuit, Capture, And Murder Of Butterflies. This Explains Many Things; For Example, The Fact That Nabokov's Novels, For All Their Elegance And Wit, Resemble Nothing So Much As Butterflies Pinned To A Board: Pretty But Dead; Symmetrical But Stiff.

From The Point Of View Of A Tapeworm, Man Was Created By God To Serve The Appetite Of The Tapeworm.

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.

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

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

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

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?

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

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

The One Great Gift To Humankind From Our Nuclear Physicists Has Been The Nuclear Bomb. How Can We Ever Thank Them?

Why This Cult Of Wilderness?... Because We Like The Taste Of Freedom; Because We Like The Smell Of Danger.

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

The Ideal Kitchen-sink Novel: Throw In Everything But The Kitchen Sink. Then Add The Kitchen Sink.

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?)

High Technology Has Done Us One Great Service: It Has Retaught Us The Delight Of Performing Simple And Primordial Tasks - Chopping Wood, Building A Fire, Drawing Water From A Spring

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

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

We Are Befouling And Destroying Our Own Home, We Are Committing A Slow But Accelerating Race Suicide And Life Murder - Planetary Biocide. Now There Is A Mighty Theme For A Mighty Book But A Challenge To Which No Modern Novelist Or Poet Has Yet Responded. Where Is Our Melville, Our Milton, Our Thomas Mann When We Need Him Most?

Life Is Cruel? Compared To What?

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Men Have Never Loved One Another Much, For Reasons We Can Readily Understand: Man Is Not A Lovable Animal.

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

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

We Need Wilderness Because We Are Wild Animals. Everyone Needs A Place Where He Can Go To Go Crazy In Peace. For The Terror, Freedom, And Delirium. Because We Need Brutality And Raw Adventure, Because Men And Women First Learned To Love In, Under, And All Around Trees, Because We Need For Every Pair Of Feet And Legs About Ten Leagues Of Naked Nature, Crags To Leap From, Mountains To Measure By, Deserts To Finally Die In When The Heart Fails.

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.

No Tyranny Is So Irksome As Petty Tyranny: The Officious Demands Of Policemen, Government Clerks, And Electromechanical Gadgets.

The Artist In Our Time Has Two Chief Responsibilities: (1) Art; And (2) Sedition.

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

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.

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

One Word Is Worth A Thousand Pictures. If It's The Right Word.

That Which Today Calls Itself Science Gives Us More And More Information, And Indigestible Glut Of Information, And Less And Less Understanding.

The Tank, The B-52, The Fighter-bomber, The State-controlled Police And Military Are The Weapons Of Dictatorship. The Rifle Is The Weapon Of Democracy. Not For Nothing Was The Revolver Called An "equalizer."

Indolence And Melancholy: Each Generates The Other. If One Can Speak Of Such Feeble Passions As Generating Anything.

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.

For Myself I Hold No Preferences Among Flowers, So Long As They Are Wild, Free, Spontaneous. Bricks To All Greenhouses! Black Thumb And Cutworm To The Potted Plant!

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.

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

Why Administrators Are Respected And Schoolteachers Are Not: An Administrator Is Paid A Lot For Doing Very Little, While A Teacher Is Paid Very Little For Doing A Lot.

A Genius Is Always On Duty; Even His Dreams Are Tax Deductible.

Spartacus, Like Jesus, Was Also Crucified By The Romans. And For Equally Good Reasons.

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.

If, As Some Say, Evil Lies In The Hearts And Not The Institutions Of Men, Then There's Hardly A Distinction Worth Making Between, Say, Hitler's Germany And Rebecca's Sunnybrook Farm.

I Believe In Nothing That I Cannot Touch, Kiss, Embrace.... The Rest Is Only Hearsay.

Platitude: A Statement That Denies By Implication What It Explicitly Affirms.

Strolling On, It Seems To Me That The Strangeness And Wonder Of Existence Are Emphasized Here, In The Desert, By The Comparative Sparsity Of The Flora And Fauna: Life Not Crowded Upon Life As In Other Places But Scattered Abroad In Spareness And Simplicity, With A Generous Gift Of Space For Each Herb And Bush And Tree, Each Stem Of Grass, So That The Living Organism Stands Out Bold And Brave And Vivid Against The Lifeless Sand And Barren Rock. The Extreme Clarity Of The Desert Light Is Equaled By The Extreme Individuation Of Desert Life-forms. Love Flowers Best In Openness And Freedom.

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

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.

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.

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

To The Intelligent Man Or Woman, Life Appears Infinitely Mysterious. But The Stupid Have An Answer For Every Question.

There Are Some Places So Beautiful They Can Make A Grown Man Break Down And Weep.

To Die Alone, On Rock Under Sun At The Brink Of The Unknown, Like A Wolf, Like A Great Bird, Seems To Me Very Good Fortune Indeed.

Chastity Is More A State Of Mind Than Of Anatomy.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Man Was Created To Complete The Horse.

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 Purpose And Function Of Government Is Not To Preside Over Change But To Prevent Change. By Political Methods When Unavoidable, By Violence When Convenient.

Christian Theology: Nothing So Grotesque Could Possibly Be True.

Beware Of The Man Who Has No Enemies.

Better A Cruel Truth Than A Comfortable Delusion.

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

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

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

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.

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

The Gurus Come From The Sickliest Nation On Earth To Tell Us How To Live. And We Pay Them For It.

Are People More Important Than The Grizzly Bear? Only From The Point Of View Of Some People.

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.

Scientific Method: There's A Madness In The Method.

Scientific Method

I Would Never Betray A Friend To Serve A Cause. Never Reject A Friend To Help An Institution. Great Nations May Fall In Ruin Before I Would Sell A Friend To Save Them.

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.

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

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.

Grown Men Do Not Need Leaders.

If We Had The Power Of Ten Shakespeares Or A Dozen Mozarts, We Could Not Produce Anything Half So Marvelous As One Ordinary Human Child.

Metaphysics Is A Cobweb That The Mind Weaves Around Things.

Mental Degeneracy May Be Caused By Lead Poisoning. Or By A Poor Dip In The Gene Pool.

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.

I Thought Of The Wilderness We Had Left Behind Us, Open To Sea And Sky, Joyous In Its Plenitude And Simplicity, Perfect Yet Vulnerable, Unaware Of What Is Coming, Defended By Nothing, Guarded By No One.

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

Some Lives Are Tragic, Some Ridiculous. Most Are Both At Once.

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.

May Your Rivers Flow Without End... Down Into A Desert Of Red Rock, Blue Mesas, Domes And Pinnacles And Grottos Of Endless Stone, And Down Again Into A Deep Vast Ancient Unknown Chasm Where Bars Of Sunlight Blaze On Profiled Cliffs... Where Something Strange And More Beautiful And More Full Of Wonder Than Your Deepest Dreams Waits For You-beyond That Next Turning Of The Canyon Walls.

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.

New Yorkers Like To Boast That If You Can Survive In New York, You Can Survive Anywhere. But If You Can Survive Anywhere, Why Live In New York?

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

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.

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.

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

Trial And Error

Every Man Should Be His Own Guru; Every Woman Her Own Gurette.

Every Moment Is Precious. And Precarious.

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

Our Contemporary Tories Prefer The Term 'ordered Liberty' To 'freedom'. The Word 'freedom' Scares Them; It Has Too Much Of A Paleolithic Ring To It.

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

Government: If You Refuse To Pay Unjust Taxes, Your Property Will Be Confiscated. If You Attempt To Defend Your Property, You Will Be Arrested. If You Resist Arrest, You Will Be Clubbed. If You Defend Yourself Against Clubbing, You Will Be Shot Dead. These Procedures Are Known As The Rule Of Law.

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.

Poor Dimitri Shostakovich: In The Soviet Union, He Was Condemned As Being Too Radical; In The West, For Being Too Conservative. He Could Please No One But The Musical Public. He Revenged Himself On Both By Writing A Short Piece Called 'march Of The Soviet Police.'

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

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

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.

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

Mexico: Where Life Is Cheap, Death Is Rich, And The Buzzards Are Never Unhappy.

By The Age Of Forty, A Man Is Responsible For His Face. And His Fate.

Anarchism Is Founded On The Observation That Since Few Men Are Wise Enough To Rule Themselves, Even Fewer Are Wise Enough To Rule Others.

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.

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

Beware Of Your Wishes: They Will Probably Come True.

Walking Takes Longer... Than Any Other Known Form Of Locomotion Except Crawling. Thus It Stretches Time And Prolongs Life. Life Is Already Too Short To Waste On Speed.

Native American

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

Great Art Is Never Perfect; Perfect Art Is Never Great.

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

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?

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.

Nobody Has So Many Friends That He Can Afford To Lose One.

In Writing, Fidelity To Fact Leads Eventually To The Poetry Of Truth.

The Knowledge That Refuge Is Available, When And If Needed, Makes The Silent Inferno Of The Desert More Easily Bearable. Mountains Complement Desert As Desert Complements City, As Wilderness Complements And Completes Civilization.

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.

It Is True That Some Of My Fiction Was Based On Actual Events. But The Events Took Place After The Fiction Was Written.

Too Many American Authors Have A Servile Streak Where Their Backbone Should Be. Where's Our Latest Nobel Laureate? More Than Likely You'll Find Him In The Rose Garden Kissing The First Lady's Foot.

If There's Anything I Hate, It's The Vibraphone. And The Cha-cha-cha. And Latin Rhythms Generally.

Reason Has Seldom Failed Us Because It Has Seldom Been Tried.

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

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.

All Men Are Brothers, We Like To Say, Half-wishing Sometimes In Secret It Were Not True. But Perhaps It Is True. And Is The Evolutionary Line From Protozoan To Spinoza Any Less Certain? That Also May Be True. We Are Obliged, Therefore, To Spread The News, Painful And Bitter Though It May Be For Some To Hear, That All Living Things On Earth Are Kindred.

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

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

When I Write "paradise" I Mean Not Only Apple Trees And Golden Women But Also Scorpions And Tarantulas And Flies, Rattlesnakes And Gila Monsters, Sandstorms, Volcanoes And Earthquakes, Bacteria And Bear, Cactus, Yucca, Bladderweed, Ocotillo And Mesquite, Flash Floods And Quicksand, And Yes - Disease And Death And The Rotting Of Flesh.

Disease And Death

It May Be True That There Are No Atheists In Foxholes. But You Don't Find Many Christians There, Either. Or, About As Many Of One As The Other.

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.

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

It Will Be Objected That A Constantly Increasing Population Makes Resistance And Conservation A Hopeless Battle. This Is True. Unless A Way Is Found To Stabilize The Nation's Population, The Parks Can Not Be Saved. Or Anything Else Worth A Damn. Wilderness Preservation, Like A Hundred Other Good Causes, Will Be Forgotten Under The Overwhelming Pressure Of A Struggle For Mere Survival And Sanity In A Completely Urbanized, Completely Industrialized, Ever More Crowded Environment. For My Own Part I Would Rather Take My Chances In A Thermonuclear War Than Live In Such A World.

What Good Is A Bill Of Rights That Does Not Include The Right To Play, To Wander, To Explore, The Right To Stillness And Solitude, To Discovery And Physical Freedom?

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.

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

Page, Arizona, Shithead Capital Of Coconino County: Any Town With Thirteen Churches And Only Four Bars Has Got An Incipient Social Problem. That Town Is Looking For Trouble.

I Wish To Be An Inspector Of Volcanoes. I Want To Study Cloud Formations And Memorize The Wind And Learn By Heart The Habits Of The Ponderosa Pine.

There Is Science, Logic, Reason; There Is Thought Verified By Experience. And Then There Is California.

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.

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.

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

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

Nature, Like Maimonides Said, Is Mainly A Good Place To Throw Beer Cans On Sunday Afternoons.

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.

Cowboys Make Better Lovers: Ask Any Cow.

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

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

Falling In Love

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?

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.

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

Life Imitates Art -- But Badly.

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.

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.

Alaska's Chief Attractions Are: (a) Its Small And Insignificant Human Population, Thanks To The Miserable Climate; And (b) Its Large And Magnificent Wildlife Population, Thanks To (a). Both Of These Attractions Are Being Rapidly Diminished, However, By (c) The Law Of Growth And Space-age Sleaze.

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

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

Society Is Like A Stew. If You Don't Stir It Up Every Once In A While Then A Layer Of Scum Floats To The Top.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

When Guns Are Outlawed, Only The Government Will Have Guns. The Government - And A Few Outlaws. If That Happens, You Can Count Me Among The Outlaws.

To The Technocrats: Have Mercy On Us. Relax A Bit, Take Time Out For Simple Pleasures. For Example, The Luxuries Of Electricity, Indoor Plumbing, Central Heating, Instant Electronic Communication And Such, Have Taught Me To Relearn And Enjoy The Basic Human Satisfactions Of Dipping Water From A Cold Clear Mountain Stream; Of Building A Wood Fire In A Cast-iron Stove; Of Using Long Winter Nights For Making Music, Making Things, Making Love; Of Writing Long Letters, In Longhand With A Fountain Pen, To The Few People On This Earth I Truly Care About.

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.

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.

Capitalism Sounds Good In Theory But It Just Doesn't Work.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

This World May Be Only Illusion -- But It's The Only Illusion We've Got.

My Notion Of A Great Novel Is Something Like A Five-hundred-page Shaggy-dog Story, With Only The Punch Line Omitted.

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

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Arthur Schopenhauer

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