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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.

-Edward Abbey

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Yes, There Are Plenty

Edward Abbey

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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.

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Longevity, Like Intelligence And Good Looks And Health And Strength Of Character, Is Largely A Matter Of Genetic Heritage. Choose Your Parents With Care.

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.

Man's Deliberate Destruction Of His Own Habitat -- Planet Earth -- Could Serve As A Mighty Theme For A Mighty Book Worthy Of A Modern Melville Or Tolstoy. But Our Best Fictioneers Confine Themselves To Domestic Drama -- Soap Opera With Literary Trimmings.

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

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

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.

Humility Is A Virtue When You Have No Other.

The "terror" Of The French Revolution Lasted For Ten Years. The Terror That Preceded And Led To It Lasted For A Thousand Years.

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.

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

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.

Better A Cruel Truth Than A Comfortable Delusion.

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

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

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

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)

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

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?)

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

A Shelf Of Classics For Our Young Adults: Tolkien, Hesse, Casteneda, Kerouac, Salinger, Tom Robbins, And _the Last Whole Earth Catalog_.

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

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

Only A Fool Would Leave The Enjoyment Of Rainbows To The Opticians. Or Give The Science Of Optics The Last Word On The Matter.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

The Missionaries Go Forth To Christianize The Savages - As If The Savages Weren't Dangerous Enough Already.

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

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

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

It Is Not An Easy Thing To Inflate A Dog.

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

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

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

There Are No Vacant Lots In Nature.

I Would Not Sacrifice A Single Living Mesquite Tree For Any Book Ever Written. One Square Mile Of Living Desert Is Worth A Hundred 'great Books' - And One Brave Deed Is Worth A Thousand.

Music Clouds The Intellect But Clarifies The Heart.

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

Civilization Is A Youth With A Molotov Cocktail In His Hand. Culture Is The Soviet Tank Or L.a. Cop That Guns Him Down.

Molotov Cocktail

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

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

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

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.

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

Taxation: How The Sheep Are Shorn.

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

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

There Is A Wine Called Easy Days And Mellow Nights, Well-known On The Outskirts Of The Navajo Reservation. It Is An Economical Wine, Fortified With The Best Of Intentions, And I Recommend It To Every Serious Wino.

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.

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.

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.

I Stand For What I Stand On.

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

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

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

Humans Were Free Before The Word Freedom Became Necessary.

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

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.

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

Our Big Social Institutions Do Not Reflect Human Nature; They Distort It.

Only A Fool Is Astonished By The Foolishness Of Mankind.

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

Pure Science Is A Myth: Both Mathematical Theoreticians Like Albert Einstein And Practical Crackpots Like Henry Ford Dealt With Different Aspects Of The Same World.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

I Know My Own Nation Best. That's Why I Despise It The Most. And Know And Love My Own People, Too, The Swine. I'm A Patriot. A Dangerous Man.

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

I Love America Because It Is A Confused, Chaotic Mess - And I Hope We Can Keep It This Way For At Least Another Thousand Years. The Permissive Society Is The Free Society.

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.

The Nuclear Bomb Took All The Fun Out Of War.

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

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.

Sentiment Without Action Is The Ruin Of The Soul.

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

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

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

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

Belief? What Do I Believe In? I Believe In Sun. In Rock. In The Dogma Of The Sun And The Doctrine Of The Rock. I Believe In Blood, Fire, Woman, Rivers, Eagles, Storm, Drums, Flutes, Banjos, And Broom-tailed Horses.

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

Once Upon A Time, I Dreamed Of Becoming A Great Man. Later, A Good Man. Now, Finally, I Find It Difficult Enough And Honor Enough To Be -- A Man.

Once Upon A Time

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

Suffering Of Others

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

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."

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

Phoenix, Arizona: An Oasis Of Ugliness In The Midst Of A Beautiful Wasteland.

In History-as-politics, The 'future' Is That Vacuum In Time Waiting To Be Filled With The Antics Of Statesmen.

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.

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.

Wilderness Begins In The Human Mind.

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.

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.

The Highest Treason, The Meanest Treason, Is To Deny The Holiness Of This Little Blue Planet On Which We Journey Through The Cold Void Of Space.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Life Is Too Tragic For Sadness: Let Us Rejoice.

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

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.

Readers, Not Critics, Are The People Who Determine A Book's Eventual Fate.

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

Those Art Lovers Who Pride Themselves Mostly On *taste* Usually Possess No Other Talent.

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

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

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

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

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

Metaphysics Is A Cobweb That The Mind Weaves Around Things.

Simplicity Is Always A Virtue.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

I, Too, Believe In Fidelity. But How Can I Be True To One Woman Without Being False To All The Others?

Heaven Is Home. Utopia Is Here. Nirvana Is Now.

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

Trial And Error

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

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

All Power Rests On Hierarchy: An Army Is Nothing But A Well-organized Lynch Mob.

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

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.

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

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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?

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.

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

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Homosexuality, Like Androgyny, Might Be An Instinctive Racial Response To Overpopulation, Crowding, And Stress. Both Flourish When Empire Reaches Its Apogee.

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

One Day In Dipstick, Nebraska, Or Landfill, Oklahoma, Is Worth More To Me Than An Eternity In Dante's Plastic Paradiso, Or Yeats's Gold-plated Byzantium.

Grand Opera Is A Form Of Musical Entertainment For People Who Hate Music.

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.

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

Industrialism, Whether Of The Capitalist Or Socialist Coloration, Is The Basic Tyrant Of The Modern Age.

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

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

If Wilderness Is Outlawed, Only Outlaws Can Save Wilderness.

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

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

A Life Without Tragedy Would Not Be Worth Living.

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

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

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

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

Paradise Is The Here And Now, The Actual, Tangible, Dogmatically Real Earth On Which We Stand. Yes, God Bless America, The Earth Upon Which We Stand.

Books Are Like Eggs -- Best When Fresh.

Charity Should Be Spontaneous. Calculated Altruism Is An Affront.

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!

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

Man Was Created To Complete The Horse.

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

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?

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

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

Fence Straddlers Have No Balls. In Compensation, However, They Enjoy A Comfortable Seat And Can Retreat Swiftly, When Danger Threatens, To Either Side Of The Fence. There Is Something To Be Said For Every Position.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

One Single Act Of Defiance Against Power, Against The State That Seems Omnipotent But Is Not, Transforms And Transfigures The Human Personality. At Least For A Time. For A While. Perhaps That Is Enough.

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

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

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

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