Background Image

...

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.

-Edward Abbey

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Within Minutes My 115-mile

Edward Abbey

...

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.

Views: 50919

Topic

More From Edward Abbey

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

All Governments Require Enemy Governments.

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

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

The Greater Your Dreams, The More Terrible Your Nightmares.

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

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

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

Among Politicians And Businessmen, *pragmatism* Is The Current Term For 'to Hell With Our Children.'

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

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

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.

My Cousin Elroy Spent Seven Years As An Ibm Taper Staring At Think Signs On The Walls Before He Finally Got A Good Idea: He Quit.

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 Patriot Must Always Be Ready To Defend His Country Against His Government.

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

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

I Believe That There Is A Kind Of Poetry, Even A Kind Of Truth, In Simple Fact.

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.

In The Soviet Union, Government Controls Industry. In The United States, Industry Controls Government. That Is The Principal Structural Difference Between The Two Great Oligarchies Of Our Time.

God Is Love? Not Bloody Likely.

Filling Out The Form: Race? Human. Religion? Paiute. Occupation? Criminal Anarchy. Hobbies? Survival With Honor.

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

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

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.

The Nuclear Bomb Took All The Fun Out Of War.

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

There's Another Disadvantage To The Use Of The Flashlight: Like Many Other Mechanical Gadgets It Tends To Separate A Man From The World Around Him. If I Switch It On My Eyes Adapt To It And I Can See Only The Small Pool Of Light It Makes In Front Of Me; I Am Isolated. Leaving The Flashlight In My Pocket Where It Belongs, I Remain A Part Of The Environment I Walk Through And My Vision Though Limited Has No Sharp Or Definite Boundary.

Wilderness Is Not A Luxury But A Necessity Of The Human Spirit.

Beauty Is Only Skin Deep; Ugliness Goes All The Way Through.

Beauty Is Only Skin Deep

The Longest Journey Begins With A Single Step, Not With The Turn Of An Ignition Key. That’s The Best Thing About Walking, The Journey Itself. It Doesn’t Much Matter Whether You Get Where You’re Going Or Not. You’ll Get There Anyway. Every Good Hike Brings You Eventually Back Home. Right Where You Started.

The World Of Employer And Employee, Like That Of Master And Slave, Debases Both.

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.

A Man Is Not Aware Of His Virtues (if Any). Nevertheless, One Hopes That They Exist.

Life: Another Day, Another Dolor.

Trout Fishing. One Must Be A Stickler For Proper Form. Use Nothing But #4 Blasting Caps, Or A Hand Grenade, If Handy, Or At A Pool Well-lined With Stone, One Blast From A .44 Magnum Will Bring A Few Stunned Brookies Quietly To The Surface.

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

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

The Idea Of Wilderness Needs No Defense. It Only Needs More Defenders. Remaining Silent About The Destruction Of Nature Is An Endorsement Of That Destruction.

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

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.

Why Can't We Simply Borrow What Is Useful To Us From Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Especially Zen, As We Borrow From Christianity, Science, American Indian Traditions And World Literature In General, Including Philosophy, And Let The Rest Go Hang? Borrow What We Need But Rely Principally Upon Our Own Senses, Common Sense And Daily Living Experience.

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

What Is The Purpose Of The Giant Sequoia Tree? The Purpose Of The Giant Sequoia Tree Is To Provide Shade For The Tiny Titmouse.

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

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

Life Without Music Would Be An Intolerable Insult.

Life Without Music

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

Though I've Lived In The Rural West Most Of My Life, I Never Once Fell In Love With A Horse. Not Once. Neither End.

A Critic Is To An Author As A Fungus To An Oak.

There Comes A Point, In Literary Objectivity, When The Author's Self- Effacement Is Hard To Distinguish From Moral Cowardice.

I Stand For What I Stand On.

One Man Alone Can Be Pretty Dumb Sometimes, But For Real Bona Fide Stupidity, There Ain't Nothing Can Beat Teamwork.

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.

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!

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

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

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.

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?

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

I've Wrecked And Ravaged Half My Life In The Pursuit Of Women, And I Suffer The Pangs Of About Seventeen Regrets -- The Seventeen Who Got Away.

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

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

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

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.

The Night I Filled An Inside Straight: Even A Blind Hog's Gonna Root Up An Acorn Once In A While.

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.

Whenever I See A Photograph Of Some Sportsman Grinning Over His Kill, I Am Always Impressed By The Striking Moral And Esthetic Superiority Of The Dead Animal To The Live One.

All Dams Are Ugly, But The Glen Canyon Dam Is Sinful Ugly.

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

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?

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

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

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.

Where All Think Alike There Is Little Danger Of Innovation.

Thought Provoking

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

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

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

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

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

A Cowboy Is A Hired Hand On The Middle Of A Horse Contemplating The Hind End Of A Cow.

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

One Thing Worse Than Self-hatred Is Chiggers.

Man Was Created To Complete The Horse.

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

Suffering Of Others

Our Culture Runs On Coffee And Gasoline, The First Often Tasting Like The Second.

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.

Most Of What We Call The Classics Of World Literature Suggest Artifacts In A Wax Museum. We Have To Hire And Pay Professors To Get Them Read And Talked About.

World Literature

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

The Industrial Corporation Is The Natural Enemy Of Nature.

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

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

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.

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

Quantum Mechanics Provides Us With An Approximate, Plausible, Conjectural Explanation Of What Actually Is, Or Was, Or May Be Taking Place Inside A Cyclotron During A Dark Night In February.

Generally Speaking, It's A Matter Of Only Mild Intellectual Interest To Me Whether The Earth Goes Around The Sun Or The Sun Goes Around The Earth. In Fact, I Don't Care A Rat's Ass Either Way.

To Meet God Or Medusa Face To Face, Even If It Means Risking Everything Human In Myself. I Dream Of A Hard And Brutal Mysticism In Which The Naked Self Merges With The Nonhuman World And Yet Somehow Survives Still Intact Individual, Separate. Paradox And Bedrock.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

The Author: An Imaginary Person Who Writes Real Books.

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.

Yes, There Are Plenty Of Heroes And Heroines Everywhere You Look. They Are Not Famous People. They Are Generally Obscure And Modest People Doing Useful Work, Keeping Their Families Together And Taking An Active Part In The Health Of Their Communities, Opposing What Is Evil (in One Way Or Another) And Defending What Is Good. Heroes Do Not Want Power Over Others.

An Empty Man Is Full Of Himself.

For Women, The Sexual Act Is A Means To A Higher End. For A Man, It Is An End In Itself.

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

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.

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.

Literary Critics, Like A Herd Of Cows Or A School Of Fish, Always Face In The Same Direction, Obeying That Love For Unity That Every Critic Requires.

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.

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.

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

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

It Is Not An Easy Thing To Inflate A Dog.

Poetry -- Even Bad Poetry -- May Be Our Final Hope.

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.

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

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

Liberty Cannot Be Guaranteed By Law. Nor By Any Thing Else Except The Resolution Of Free Citizens To Defend Their Liberties.

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

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

To Be Alive Is To Take Risks; To Be Always Safe And Secure Is Death.

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

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

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.

There Is Beauty, Heartbreaking Beauty, Everywhere.

Beauty Everywhere

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

A Life Without Tragedy Would Not Be Worth Living.

Home Is Where, When You Have To Go There, You Probably Shouldn't.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Charity Should Be Spontaneous. Calculated Altruism Is An Affront.

Of All Bores, The Worst Is The Sparkling Bore.

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.

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

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.

If You Feel That You're Not Ready To Die, Never Fear; Nature Will Give You Complete And Adequate Assistance When The Time Comes.

The Real Work Of Men Was Hunting Meat. The Invention Of Agriculture Was A Giant Step In The Wrong Direction, Leading To Serfdom, Cities, And Empire. From A Race Of Hunters, Artists, Warriors, And Tamers Of Horses, We Degraded Ourselves To What We Are Now: Clerks, Functionaries, Laborers, Entertainers, Processors Of Information.

A Good Book Is A Kind Of Paper Club, Serving To Rouse The Slumbrous And To Silence The Obtuse.

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

I Am Hopeful, Though Not Full Of Hope, And The Only Reason I Don't Believe In Happy Endings Is Because I Don't Believe In Endings.

When A Writer Has Done The Best That He Can Do, He Should Then Withdraw From The Book-writing Business And Take Up An Honest Trade Like Shoe Repair, Cattle Stealing, Or Screwworm Management.

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

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

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.

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?

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.

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

I Must Confess That I Know Nothing Whatsoever About True Underlying Reality, Never Having Met Any.

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

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

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

Instant Communication Is Not Communication At All But Merely A Frantic, Trivial, Nerve-wracking Bombardment Of Cliches, Threats, Fads, Fashions, Gibberish And Advertising.

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 Took The Other Road, All Right, But Only Because It Was The Easy Road For Me, The Way I Wanted To Go. If I've Encountered Some Unnecessary Resistance That's Because Most Of The Traffic Is Going The Other Way.

Without Courage, All Other Virtues Are Useless.

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

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

The Ideal Society Can Be Described, Quite Simply, As That In Which No Man Has The Power Of Means To Coerce Others.

Love Flowers Best In Openness And Freedom.

Flora And Fauna

As A Confirmed Melancholic, I Can Testify That The Best And Maybe Only Antidote For Melancholia Is Action. However, Like Most Melancholics, I Suffer Also From Sloth.

Let Us Hope Our Weapons Are Never Needed - But Do Not Forget What The Common People Of This Nation Knew When They Demanded The Bill Of Rights: An Armed Citizenry Is The First Defense, The Best Defense, And The Final Defense Against Tyranny.

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

If Wilderness Is Outlawed, Only Outlaws Can Save Wilderness.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

The Most Common Form Of Terrorism In The U.s.a. Is That Carried On By Bulldozers And Chain Saws.

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.

All Revolutions Have Failed? Perhaps. But Rebellion For Good Cause Is Self- Justifying -- A Good In Itself. Rebellion Transforms Slaves Into Human Beings, If Only For An Hour.

Only A Fool Is Astonished By The Foolishness Of Mankind.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Trending Author

Caprice Bourret

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Category