Related:

• A critic is to an author as a fungus to an oak. -- Edward Abbey
• When a writer has done the best that he can do, he should then withdraw from the book-writing business and take up an honest trade like shoe repair, cattle stealing, or screwworm management.
  -- Edward Abbey...
• When the writer has done his best, he then should proceed to do his second best. -- Edward Abbey
• The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.
  -- Edward Abbey...
• Like any writer, I'd rather be read than dead. Like any serious *author*, I'd rather be dead than not read at all.
  -- Edward Abbey...
• A good writer must have more than vin rose in his veins, use more than Chablis for ink.
  -- Edward Abbey...
• Beware the writer who always encloses the word *reality* in quotation mark
  He's trying to slip something over on you. Or into you. -- Edward Abbey...
• Style: 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 Abbey...
• A drink a day keeps the shrink away. -- Edward Abbey