Edward Abbey Quotes About Books

Quotes about: Books

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

  Edward Abbey

  Book, Focus, Force

  Edward Abbey (2006). “Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast”

• The best thing about graduating from the university was that I finally had time to sit on a log and read a good book.

  Edward Abbey

  Book, Graduates, Best Things

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.31, RosettaBooks

• Readers, not critics, are the people who determine a book's eventual fate.

  Edward Abbey

  Book, Fate, People

  Edward Abbey (2006). “Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast”

• 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.

  Edward Abbey

  Life, Business, Book

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.32, RosettaBooks

• What we need now are heroes and heroines, about a million of them, one brave deed is worth a thousand books. Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul.

  Edward Abbey

  Book, Hero, Brave

  Edward Abbey (1984). “Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside”, p.15, Macmillan

• A good book is a kind of paper club, serving to rouse the slumbrous and to silence the obtuse.

  Edward Abbey

  Book, Silence, Paper

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.31, RosettaBooks

• In order to write a book, it is necessary to sit down (or stand up) and write. Therein lies the difficulty.

  Edward Abbey

  Lying, Book, Writing

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.36, RosettaBooks

• Jane Austen: Getting into her books is like getting in bed with a cadaver. Something vital is lacking; namely, life.

  Edward Abbey

  Book, Bed, Cadavers

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.32, RosettaBooks

• The author: an imaginary person who writes real books.

  Edward Abbey

  Real, Book, Writing

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.37, RosettaBooks

• 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.

  Edward Abbey

  Book, Writing, Shoes

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.33, RosettaBooks

• 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.

  Edward Abbey

  Book, Ideas, Smell

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.41, RosettaBooks

• How long does it take to write a good book? All of the years that you've lived.

  Edward Abbey

  Book, Writing, Years

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.33, RosettaBooks

• 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.

  Edward Abbey

  Drama, Book, Men

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.48, RosettaBooks

• There comes a time in the life of us all when we must lay aside our books or put down our tools and leave our place of work and walk forth on the road to meet the enemy face-to-face. Once and for all and at last

  Edward Abbey

  Book, Enemy, Tools

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.28, RosettaBooks

• My own best books have not been published. In fact, they've not even been written yet.

  Edward Abbey

  Book, Facts, My Own

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.33, RosettaBooks

• 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.

  Edward Abbey

  Book, Sacrifice, Squares

  Edward Abbey (2006). “Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast”

• Books are like eggs -- best when fresh.

  Edward Abbey

  Book, Eggs

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.31, RosettaBooks

• 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?)

  Edward Abbey

  Running, Book, East

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.34, RosettaBooks

• 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?

  Edward Abbey

  Suicide, Book, Home

• There are only two kinds of books -- good books and the others. The good are winnowed from the bad through the democracy of time.

  Edward Abbey

  Book, Two, Democracy

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.31, RosettaBooks

• It is always dishonest for a reviewer to review the author instead of the author's book.

  Edward Abbey

  Book, Reviews, Reviewers

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.34, RosettaBooks

• I've never yet read a review of one of my own books that I couldn't have written much better myself.

  Edward Abbey

  Book, Reviews, My Own

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.31, RosettaBooks

• Most new books drop immediately into the oblivion they so richly deserve.

  Edward Abbey

  Book, Oblivion, New Books

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.31, RosettaBooks

• My books always make the best-seller lists in Wolf Hole, Arizona, and Hanksville, Utah.

  Edward Abbey

  Book, Utah, Arizona

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.35, RosettaBooks

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