“What's more American than violence?" Hayduke wanted to know. "Violence, it's as American as pizza pie.”
“Poor Hayduke: won all his arguments but lost his immortal soul.”
“My friends and I live in the American SW because we love it, and love it for its own sake - not merely because it's the last region of the forty-eight states to be buried under asphalt and greed.”
“To the question: Wilderness, who needs it? Doc would say: Because we like the taste of freedom, comrades. Because we like the smell of danger. But, thought Hayduke, what about the smell of fear, Dad?”
“Yes, I know, if the American Indians had enforced such a policy none of us pale-faced honkies would be here. But the Indians were foolish, and divided, and failed to keep our WASP ancestors out. They've regretted it ever since.”
“There are only two living American authors fully deserving of the Nobel Prize. One is Lewis Mumford. The other is Wallace Stegner, whose novels and essays provide us a comprehensive portrait of industrial society in all its glittering corruption and radiant evil.”
“I hate and fear violence myself, have always avoided barroom brawls, and tho' I'm a bit of a gun-nut, and a member of the NRA, I never shoot at anything but beer cans and mule deer. (In season.) And seldom hit either, except by accident.”