Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

"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."

"[R]eality and real people are too subtle and complicated for anybody's typewriter, even Tolstoy's, even yours, even mine."

"Certainly, I want to capture the reader's attention from the beginning and hold it until the end: that is half the purpose of my art. The other half must be to tell my story in the most honest way that I can."

"What is the essence of the art of writing? Part One: Have something to say. Part Two: Say it well."

"As for writing, that's a cruel hard business. Unless you're very lucky it'll break your heart."

"Ah yes, the head is full of books. The hard part is to force them down through the bloodstream and out through the fingers."

"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."

"If it's knowledge and wisdom you want, then seek out the company of those who do real work for an honest purpose."

"The novel should tell the truth, as I see the truth, or as the novelist persuades me to see it. And one more demand: I expect the novelist to aspire to improve the world. ... As a novelist, I want to be more than one more dog barking at the other dogs barking at me. Not out of any foolish hope that one novelist, or all virtuous novelists in chorus, can make much of a difference for good, except in the long run, but out of the need to prevent the human world from relaxing into something worse. To maintain the tension between truth and falsity, beauty and ugliness, good and evil. ... I believe the highest duty of the serious novelist is, whatever the means or technique, to be a critic of his society, to hold society to its own ideals, or if these ideals are unworthy, to suggest better ideals."

"But it is a writer's duty to write and speak and record the truth, always the truth, no matter whom may be offended."

"Philosophy without action is the ruin of the soul. One brave deed is worth a hundred books, a thousand theories, a million words. Now as always we need heroes. And heroines! Down with the passive and the limp."