The Brave Cowboy Quotes

“I shall never sacrifice a friend to an ideal. I shall never desert a friend to save an institution. I shall never betray a friend for the sake of the law. Great nations may fall in ruin before I shall sell a friend to preserve them. I pray to the God within me to give me the power to live by this design.”
― Edward Abbey, The Brave Cowboy: An Old Tale in a New Time

“Where're your papers?"
"My what?"
"Your I.D. -- draft card, social security, driver's license."
"Don't have none. Don't need none. I already know who I am.”
― Edward Abbey, The Brave Cowboy: An Old Tale in a New Time

“The black rock was sharp-edged, hot, and hard as corundum; it seemed not merely alien but impervious to life. Yet on the southern face of almost every rock the lichens grew, yellow, rusty-brown, yellow-green, like patches of dirty paint daubed on the stone.”
― Edward Abbey, The Brave Cowboy: An Old Tale in a New Time

“obedience is such a fundamental habit of the contemporary American mind that any kind of disobedience is regarded as a form of insanity.”
― Edward Abbey, The Brave Cowboy

“Hopeful?” Bondi continued; “well, not really. I don’t see the world getting any better; like you I see it getting worse. I see liberty being strangled like a dog everywhere I look, I see my own country overwhelmed by ugliness and mediocrity and overcrowding, the land smothered under airstrips and superhighways, the natural wealth of a million years squandered on atomic bombs and tin automobiles and television sets and ball-point fountain pens. It’s a sorry sight indeed; I can’t blame you for wanting no part of it. But I’m not yet ready to withdraw, despite the horror of it. Even if withdrawal is possible, which I doubt.”
― Edward Abbey, The Brave Cowboy

“Pinto beans without sauce or chili or even much salt; a slice of bread; a tincup of coffee. Out of loyalty to life and the immortal spirit of man, he ate.”
― Edward Abbey, The Brave Cowboy

“No one listened to the music, no one cared, drunk or sober; the noise was not meant for entertainment but for the sustaining of a certain psychological atmosphere, the pervasion of space, the dispersal of unseemly silences. So that a man without anything to say and unable to think could still imagine himself at the vortex of an activity, however meaningless.”
― Edward Abbey, The Brave Cowboy

“Well, hell, use a ball bat. And strike first, from behind. Don’t give him a chance to take it away from you. You don’t want a fight, you want revenge.” He grinned a little. “When you just want a fight you can always go home to your wife.”
― Edward Abbey, The Brave Cowboy

“There is a certain primitive attraction in it,” Bondi said, “but what about the future? Are we to spend the rest of our lives shooting animals, chewing skins, hiding out from game wardens and county sheriffs?”
― Edward Abbey, The Brave Cowboy

“They won’t break me. I’ve got a nimble and pliant will, and the powers of a chameleon. I’ll conform for a year, or two years if necessary, and when I get out I’ll be a wiser man. Maybe a sadder man. Possibly bitter, too—I hope not.”
― Edward Abbey, The Brave Cowboy

“that the sound of Jack Burns singing one of Burns’ own songs had been a form of illusion, the actualization of memory and possibly desire rather than a direct perception.”
― Edward Abbey, The Brave Cowboy

“What are you in for, Rev’rend, anyway? Me, son? My body’s here but the spirit’s free as a bluebird. Okay, then why is your body here? Well now, the Judge he calls it assault. I done hit a man and he falls down. Didn’t hit him hard but he falls down like a log. Maybe he wasn’t standin very good.”
― Edward Abbey, The Brave Cowboy

“Serenity is for the gods—not becoming in a mortal. Better to be partisan and passionate on this earth; be plenty objective enough when dead.”
― Edward Abbey, The Brave Cowboy

“Hinton walked blindly toward his truck, unwrapping his candy bar, while the cicada in the field and the frogs in the swampy ditch sang hosannas to the sky. PART TWO”
― Edward Abbey, The Brave Cowboy

“What he wanted was peace, order, and the reassurance of human voices.”
― Edward Abbey, The Brave Cowboy

“An under-privileged juniper tree, living not on water and soil but on memory and hope. And almost alone. To the”
― Edward Abbey, The Brave Cowboy

“O all brave cowboys dead and revived
God only knows how you ever survived
or stayed out of Hell with souls unshrived.”
― Edward Abbey, The Brave Cowboy

“Like all good cowboys dead and alive
on fighting and grit and blood they thrive
with a little strong whisky to keep hope alive.”
― Edward Abbey, The Brave Cowboy

“It’s only a story. None of it really happened. How could it? How could such people be? The prisoner is probably a professor. The sheriff loses the next election. The truck driver died of emphysema. And as for the cowboy, that character, why nobody even knows where he is anymore. Or even, to be honest, if he ever really was.”
― Edward Abbey, The Brave Cowboy

“I don’t see the world getting any better; like you I see it getting worse. I see liberty being strangled like a dog everywhere I look, I see my own country overwhelmed by ugliness and mediocrity and overcrowding, the land smothered under airstrips and superhighways, the natural wealth of a million years squandered on atomic bombs and tin automobiles and television sets and ball-point fountain pens. It’s a sorry sight indeed; I can’t blame you for wanting no part of it.”
― Edward Abbey, The Brave Cowboy