The purpose of love, sex, and marriage is the production and raising of children. But look about you: Most people have no business having children. They are unqualified, either genetically or culturally or both, to reproduce such sorry specimens as themselves. Of all our privileges, the license to breed is the one most grossly abused.
Edward AbbeyLongevity, like intelligence and good looks and health and strength of character, is largely a matter of genetic heritage. Choose your parents with care.
Edward AbbeyStyle: There is something in too much verbal felicity (as in Joyce or Nabokov or Borges) that can betray the writer into technique for the sake of technique.
Edward AbbeyThrough logic and inference we can prove anything. Therefore, logic and inference, in contrast to ordinary daily living experience, are secondary instruments of knowledge. Probably tertiary.
Edward AbbeySome people write to please, to soothe, to console. Others to provoke, to challenge, to exasperate and infuriate. I've always found the second approach the more pleasing.
Edward AbbeyThe longest journey begins with a single step, not with the turn of an ignition key. Thatโs the best thing about walking, the journey itself. It doesnโt much matter whether you get where youโre going or not. Youโll get there anyway. Every good hike brings you eventually back home. Right where you started.
Edward Abbey