The true, unacknowledged purpose of capital punishment is to inspire fear and awe – fear and awe of the State.
Why do I write? I write to entertain my friends and to exasperate our enemies. To unfold the folded lie, to record to truth of our time, and, of course, to promote esthetic bliss.
A good writer must have more than vin rose in his veins, use more than Chablis for ink.
Fence straddlers have no balls. In compensation, however, they enjoy a comfortable seat and can retreat swiftly, when danger threatens, to either side of the fence. There is something to be said for every position.
Jack Kerouac, like a sick refrigerator, worked too hard at keeping cool and died on his mama’s lap from alcohol and infantilism.
A genius is always on duty; even his dreams are tax deductible.
Truth is always the enemy of power. And power the enemy of truth.
It’s a fool’s life, a rogue’s life, and a good life if you keep laughing all the way to the grave.
What draws us into the desert is the search for something intimate in the remote.
Our modern industrial economy takes a mountain covered with trees, lakes, running streams and transforms it into a mountain of junk, garbage, slime pits, and debris.
A giant thirst is a great joy when quenched in time.
The earth, like the sun, like the air, belongs to everyone and to no one.
Running the big rapids is like sex: half the fun lies in the anticipation. Two thirds of the thrill with the approach. The remainder is only ecstasy-or darkness.
High technology has done us one great service: It has retaught us the delight of performing simple and primordial tasks – chopping wood, building a fire, drawing water from a spring.
Alaska is our biggest, buggiest, boggiest state. Texas remains our largest unfrozen state. But mountainous Utah, if ironed out flat, would take up more space on a map than either.
A man’s duty? To be ready – with rifle or rood – to defend his home when the showdown comes.
I hold no preference among flowers, so long as they are wild, free, spontaneous.
Readers, not critics, are the people who determine a book’s eventual fate.
Belief? What do I believe in? I believe in sun. In rock. In the dogma of the sun and the doctrine of the rock. I believe in blood, fire, woman, rivers, eagles, storm, drums, flutes, banjos, and broom-tailed horses...
My sole literary ambition is to write one good novel, then retire to my hut in the desert, assume the lotus position, compose my mind and senses, and sink into meditation, contemplating my novel.