Better a cruel truth than a comfortable delusion.

— Edward Abbey

Beyond the wall of the unreal city … there is another world waiting for you. It is the old true world of the deserts, the mountains, the forests, the islands, the shores, the open plains. Go there. Be there. Walk gently and quietly deep within it. And then —May your trails be dim, lonesome, stony, narrow, winding and only slightly uphill. May the wind bring rain for the slick rock potholes fourteen miles on the other side of yonder blue ridge. May God's dog serenade your campfire, may the rattlesnake and the screech owl amuse your reverie, may the Great Sun dazzle your eyes by day and the Great Bear watch over you by night.

— Edward Abbey

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

— Edward Abbey

But of the seven deadly sins, wrath is the healthiest - next only to lust.

— Edward Abbey

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.

— Edward Abbey

For myself I hold no preferences among flowers, so long as they are wild, free, spontaneous. Bricks to all greenhouses! Black thumb and cutworm to the potted plant!

— Edward Abbey

Grown men do not need leaders.

— Edward Abbey

Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.

— Edward Abbey

Hard times are a-coming, and people without useful, practical skills are going to suffer. Or suffer most.

— Edward Abbey

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. Therefore, the frogs, the toads, keep on singing even though we know if they don't, that the sound of their uproar must surely be luring all the snakes and ringtail cats and kit foxes and coyotes and great horned owls toward the scene of their happiness.

— Edward Abbey