Background Image

...

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

-Edward Abbey

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

We Know So Very

Edward Abbey

...

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

Views: 90787

Topic

More From Edward Abbey

There Is A Fine Art To Making Enemies And It Requires Diligent Cultivation. It's Not As Easy As It Looks.

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

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

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.

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

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

Wilderness. The Word Itself Is Music.

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.

Where All Think Alike There Is Little Danger Of Innovation.

Thought Provoking

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

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

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

All Governments Need Enemies. How Else To Justify Their Existence?

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

Beware Of Your Wishes: They Will Probably Come True.

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.

So I Lived Alone. The First Thing I Did Was Take Off My Pants. Naturally.

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.

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

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.

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 Would Like To Evoke The Sense Of Wonder And Magic In The Reader But Without Invoking The Mystical, The Supernatural Or The Transcendent.

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

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

Taxation: How The Sheep Are Shorn.

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.

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.

Water, Water, Water....there Is No Shortage Of Water In The Desert But Exactly The Right Amount , A Perfect Ratio Of Water To Rock, Water To Sand, Insuring That Wide Free Open, Generous Spacing Among Plants And Animals, Homes And Towns And Cities, Which Makes The Arid West So Different From Any Other Part Of The Nation. There Is No Lack Of Water Here Unless You Try To Establish A City Where No City Should Be.

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

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 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.

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

The Greater Your Dreams, The More Terrible Your Nightmares.

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.

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

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.

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.

Women Who Love Only Women May Have A Good Point.

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

The Industrial Corporation Is The Natural Enemy Of Nature.

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

Nature And Life

Art, Science, Philosophy, Religion -- Each Offers At Best Only A Crude Simplification Of Actual Living Experience.

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 Sneakiest Form Of Literary Subtlety, In A Corrupt Society, Is To Speak The Plain Truth. The Critics Will Not Understand You; The Public Will Not Believe You; Your Fellow Writers Will Shake Their Heads. Laughter, Praise, Honors, Money, And The Love Of Beautiful Girls Will Be Your Only Reward.

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

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.

Anarchism Is Democracy Taken Seriously.

Why The Critics, Like A Flock Of Ducks, Always Move In Perfect Unison: Their Authority With The Public Depends Upon An Appearance Of Unanimous Agreement. One Dissenting Voice Would Shatter The Whole Fragile Structure.

The World Is Full Of Burled And Gnarly Knobs On Which You Can Hang A Metaphysical System. If You Must.

Paradise For A Happy Man Lies In His Own Good Nature.

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.

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

Hierarchical Institutions Are Like Giant Bulldozers -- Obedient To The Whim Of Any Fool Who Takes The Controls.

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.

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

Books Are Like Eggs -- Best When Fresh.

Motherhood Is An Essential, Difficult, And Full-time Job. Women Who Do Not Wish To Be Mothers Should Not Have Babies.

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.

Charity Should Be Spontaneous. Calculated Altruism Is An Affront.

The Nuclear Bomb Took All The Fun Out Of War.

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

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.

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.

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?

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

‎"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

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

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

I Despise My Own Nation Most. Because I Know It Best. Because I Still Love It, Suffering From Hope. For Me, That's Patrotism.

One Thing Worse Than Self-hatred Is Chiggers.

If Wilderness Is Outlawed, Only Outlaws Can Save Wilderness.

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

When Riding My Old Harley A Ninety Per At Midnight Down The Via Roma In Naples, I Kept One Consolation Firmly In Mind: If Anything Goes Wrong, I'll Never Have Time To Regret It.

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.

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.

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

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?

Let Us Praise The Noble Turkey Vulture: No One Envies Him; He Harms Nobody; And He Contemplates Our Little World From A Most Serene And Noble Height.

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.

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

Every Man Has Two Vocations: His Own And Philosophy.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

Better A Cruel Truth Than A Comfortable Delusion.

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

In Marriage, The Occasional Catastrophic Crisis Is Easier To Manage Than The Daily Routine.

I Do Not Believe In Personal Immortality; It Seems So Unnecessary. Show Me One Man Who Deserves To Live Forever.

There Is No Trajectory So Pathetic As That Of An Artist In Decline.

Orthodoxy Is A Relaxation Of The Mind Accompanied By A Stiffening Of The Heart.

I Suppose Each Of Us Has His Own Fantasy Of How He Wants To Die. I Would Like To Go Out In A Blaze Of Glory, Myself, Or Maybe Simply Disappear Someday, Far Out In The Heart Of The Wilderness I Love, All By Myself, Alone With The Universe And Whatever God May Happen To Be Looking On. Disappear - And Never Return. That's My Fantasy.

When The Situation Is Desperate, It Is Too Late To Be Serious. Be Playful.

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

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?

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

Of All Bores, The Worst Is The Sparkling Bore.

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.

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.

The Best People, Like The Best Wines, Come From The Hills.

I Hold No Preference Among Flowers, So Long As They Are Wild, Free, Spontaneous.

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

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

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.

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

Let The People Walk. Or Ride Horses, Bicycles, Mules, Wild Pigs-anything-but Keep The Automobiles And The Motorcycles And All Their Motorized Relatives Out. We Have Agreed Not To Drive Our Automobiles Into Cathedrals, Concert Halls, Art Museums, Legislative Assemblies, Private Bedrooms And Other Sanctums Of Our Culture; We Should Treat Our National Parks With The Same Deference, For They, Too, Are Holy Places.

What Draws Us Into The Desert Is The Search For Something Intimate In The Remote.

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.

Nothing Could Be Older Than The Daily News, Nothing Deader Than Yesterday's Newspaper.

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

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.

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

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

There Are Circumstances In Which Suicide Presents A Viable Option; A Workable Alternative; The Only Sensible Solution.

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.

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

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

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.

Don't Talk To Me About Other Worlds, Separate Realities, Lost Continents Or Invisible Realms -- I Know Where I Belong. Heaven Is Home. Utopia Is Here. Nirvana Is Now.

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

The Very Poor Are Strictly Materialistic. It Takes Money To Be A Mystic.

By The Age Of Eighteen, A Human Has Acquired Enough Joy And Heartache To Provide The Food Of Reflection For A Century.

Original Sin, The True Original Sin, Is The Blind Destruction For The Sake Of Greed Of This Natural Paradise Which Lies All Around Us-if Only We Were Worthy Of It.

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

All Governments Require Enemy Governments.

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?)

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

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

The Tragic Sense Of Life: Our Heroic Acceptance Of The Suffering Of Others.

Suffering Of Others

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.

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

If A Man’s Imagination Were Not So Weak, So Easily Tired, If His Capacity For Wonder Not So Limited, He Would Abandon Forever Such Fantasies Of The Supernal. He Would Learn To Perceive In Water, Leaves And Silence More Than Sufficient Of The Absolute And Marvelous, More Than Enough To Console Him For The Loss Of The Ancient Dream.

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

Humans Were Free Before The Word Freedom Became Necessary.

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

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

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.

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

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 World Without Huge Regions Of Total Wilderness Would Be A Cage; A World Without Lions And Tigers And Vultures And Snakes And Elk And Bison Would Be - Will Be - A Human Zoo. A High-tech Slum.

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

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.

Women: We Cannot Love Them All. But We Must Try.

It Is An Author's Most Solemn Obligation To Honor Truth. If The Free And Independent Writer Does Not Speak Truth To Power, Who Will?

The Basic Science Is Not Physics Or Mathematics But Biology -- The Study Of Life. We Must Learn To Think Both Logically And Bio-logically.

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

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.

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

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.'

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

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

The Great Question Of Life Is Not The Question Of Death But The Question Of Life. Fear Of Death Shames Us All.

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

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

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

Literature, Like Anything Else, Can Become A Wearisome Business If You Make A Lifetime Specialty Of It. A Healthy, Wholesome Man Would No More Spend His Entire Life Reading Great Books Than He Would Packing Cookies For Nabisco.

Music Is A Savage Art, A Measured Madness.

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

Wealth Should Come Like Manna From Heaven, Unearned And Uncalled For. Money Should Be Like Grace -- A Gift. It Is Not Worth Sweating And Scheming For.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The One Thing ... That Is Truly Ugly Is The Climate Of Hate And Intimidation, Created By A Noisy Few, Which Makes The Decent Majority Reluctant To Air In Public Their Views On Anything Controversial. ... Where All Pretend To Be Thinking Alike, It's Likely That No One Is Thinking At All.

Humankind Will Not Be Free Until The Last Kremlin Commissar Is Strangled With The Entrails Of The Last Pentagon Chief Of Staff.

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

We Are Kindred All Of Us, Killer And Victim, Predator And Prey, Me And The Sly Coyote, The Soaring Buzzard, The Elegant Gopher Snake, And Trembling Cottontail, The Foul Worms That Feed On Our Entrails; All Of Them, All Of Us. Long Live Diversity, Long Live The Earth!

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.

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.

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.

The Feminist Notion That The Whole Of Human History Has Been Nothing But A Vast Intricate Conspiracy By Men To Enslave Their Wives, Mothers, Daughters, And Sisters Presents Us With An Intellectual Neurosis For Which We Do Not Yet Have A Name.

I Always Write With My .357 Magnum Handy. Why? Well, You Never Know When God May Try To Interfere.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

King Arthur And His Armored Goons Of The Round Table Functioned As The Politburo Of A Slave State: Camelot. Of All Who Have Written On The Matter Of Arthur, From Malory To White, Only Mark Twain Understood This. But Mark Twain Was A Great Writer.

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.

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

The Latino Military Fare Badly When They Stumble Into War With The Gringos. But In The Torture, Murder, And Massacre Of Their Own People, They Have Always Performed With Brilliance And Elan.

My Computer Tells Me That In Twenty-five Years There Will Be No More Computers.

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.

A Man Could Be A Lover And Defender Of The Wilderness Without Ever In His Lifetime Leaving The Boundaries Of Asphalt, Powerlines, And Right-angled Surfaces. We Need Wilderness Whether Or Not We Ever Set Foot In It. We Need A Refuge Even Though We May Never Need To Set Foot In It. We Need The Possibility Of Escape As Surely As We Need Hope; Without It The Life Of The Cities Would Drive All Men Into Crime Or Drugs Or Psychoanalysis.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

There Are No Vacant Lots In Nature.

Trending Author

Lisa Scottoline

Category