In social institutions, the whole is always less than the sum of its parts. There will never be a state as good as its people, or a church worthy of its congregation, or a university equal to its faculty and students.
Edward AbbeyWhat our economists call a depressed area almost always turns out to be a cleaner, freer, more livable place than most.
Edward AbbeyIn the land of bleating sheep and braying jackasses, one brave and honest man is bound to create a scandal.
Edward AbbeyVladimir Nabokov was a writer who cared nothing for music and whose favorite sport was the pursuit, capture, and murder of butterflies. This explains many things; for example, the fact that Nabokov's novels, for all their elegance and wit, resemble nothing so much as butterflies pinned to a board: pretty but dead; symmetrical but stiff.
Edward Abbey