“When I write "paradise" I mean not only apple trees and golden women but also scorpions and tarantulas and flies, rattlesnakes and Gila monsters, sandstorms, volcanoes and earthquakes, bacteria and bear, cactus, yucca, bladderweed, ocotillo and mesquite, flash floods and quicksand, and yes — disease and death and the rotting of flesh.”

—  Edward Abbey, book Desert Solitaire

"Down the River", p. 147
Desert Solitaire (1968)

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Edward Abbey146
American author and essayist 1927–1989

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