Terry Tempest Williams quotes
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“The Eyes of the Future are looking back at us and they are praying for us to see beyond our own time.”
-- Terry Tempest WilliamsSource : Terry Tempest Williams (2002). “Red: passion and patience in the desert”, Vintage
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“I pray to the birds because they remind me of what I love rather than what I fear. And at the end of my prayers, they teach me how to listen.”
-- Terry Tempest WilliamsSource : Terry Tempest Williams (2015). “Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place”, p.149, Vintage
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“Finding beauty in a broken world is creating beauty in the world we find.”
-- Terry Tempest WilliamsSource : "BOOKMARK: Terry Tempest Williams on the perspective of nature and healing". Interview with Laurie Hertzel, www.startribune.com. June 30, 2017.
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“Story is the umbilical cord that connects us to the past, present, and future. Family. Story is a relationship between the teller and the listener, a responsibility. . . . Story is an affirmation of our ties to one another.”
-- Terry Tempest Williams -
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“It is time for us to take off our masks, to step out from behind our personas - whatever they might be: educators, activists, biologists, geologists, writers, farmers, ranchers, and bureaucrats - and admit we are lovers, engaged in an erotics of place. Loving the land. Honoring its mysteries. Acknowledging, embracing the spirit of place - there is nothing more legitimate and there is nothing more true. That is why we are here. That is why we do what we do. There is nothing intellectual about it. We love the land. It is a primal affair.”
-- Terry Tempest WilliamsSource : Terry Tempest Williams (2015). “An Unspoken Hunger”, p.77, Vintage
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“It's strange how deserts turn us into believers. I believe in walking in a landscape of mirages, because you learn humility. I believe in living in a land of little water because life is drawn together. And I believe in the gathering of bones as a testament to spirits that have moved on. If the desert is holy, it is because it is a forgotten place that allows us to remember the sacred. Perhaps that is why every pilgrimage to the desert is a pilgrimage to the self.”
-- Terry Tempest WilliamsSource : Terry Tempest Williams (2015). “Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place”, p.148, Vintage
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“Once upon a time, when women were birds, there was the simple understanding that to sing at dawn, and to sing at dusk, was to heal the world through joy. The birds still remember what we have forgotten, that the world is meant to be celebrated.”
-- Terry Tempest Williams -
“The eyes of the future are looking back at us and they are praying for us to see beyond our own time. They are kneeling with hands clasped that we might act with restraint, that we might leave room for the life that is destined to come. To protect what is wild is to protect what is gentle. Perhaps the wilderness we fear is the pause between our own heartbeats, the silent space that says we live only by grace. Wilderness lives by this same grace. Wild mercy is in our hands.”
-- Terry Tempest Williams -
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“The world is holy. We are holy. All life is holy. Daily prayers are delivered on the lips of breaking waves, the whisperings of grasses, the shimmering of leaves.”
-- Terry Tempest Williams -
“I take a deep breath and sidestep my fear and begin speaking from the place where beauty and bravery meet--within the chambers of a quivering heart.”
-- Terry Tempest Williams -
“What is the most important thing one learns in school? Self-esteem, support, and friendship.”
-- Terry Tempest Williams -
“There are two important days in a woman's life: the day she is born and the day she finds out why.”
-- Terry Tempest Williams -
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“Today, I feel stronger, learning to live within the natural cycles of a day and to not expect too much of myself. As women, we hold the moon in our bellies. It is too much to ask to operate on full-moon energy three hundred and sixty-five days a year. I am in a crescent phase.”
-- Terry Tempest Williams -
“If the desert is holy, it is because it is a forgotten place that allows us to remember the sacred. Perhaps that is why every pilgrimage to the desert is a pilgrimage to the self. There is no place to hide and so we are found.”
-- Terry Tempest Williams -
“We are wearing coats of trust. When one tells a story this is what happens.”
-- Terry Tempest Williams -
“To be whole. To be complete. Wildness reminds us what it means to be human, what we are connected to rather than what we are separate from.”
-- Terry Tempest WilliamsSource : Terry Tempest Williams (2008). “Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert”, p.75, Vintage
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“The unexpected action of deep listening can create a space of transformation capable of shattering complacency and despair.”
-- Terry Tempest Williams -
“This is my living faith, an active faith, a faith of verbs: to question, explore, experiment, experience, walk, run, dance, play, eat, love, learn, dare, taste, touch, smell, listen, speak, write, read, draw, provoke, emote, scream, sin, repent, cry, kneel, pray, bow, rise, stand, look, laugh, cajole, create, confront, confound, walk back, walk forward, circle, hide, and seek.”
-- Terry Tempest Williams -
“The human heart is the first home of democracy. It is where we embrace our questions: Can we be equitable? Can we be generous? Can we listen with our whole beings, not just our minds, and offer our attention rather than our opinion? And do we have enough resolve in our hearts to act courageously, relentlessly, without giving up, trusting our fellow citizens to join us in our determined pursuit-a living democracy?”
-- Terry Tempest WilliamsSource : Terry Tempest Williams (2010). “The Open Space of Democracy”, p.83, Wipf and Stock Publishers
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“A shadow is never created in darkness. It is born of light. We can be blind to it and blinded by it. Our shadow asks us to look at what we don’t want to see”
-- Terry Tempest WilliamsSource : Terry Tempest Williams (2012). “When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice”, p.178, Macmillan
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“For far too long we have been seduced into walking a path that did not lead us to ourselves. For far too long we have said yes when we wanted to say no. And for far too long we have said no when we desperately wanted to say yes. . . . When we don't listen to our intuition, we abandon our souls. And we abandon our souls because we are afraid if we don't, others will abandon us.”
-- Terry Tempest Williams -
“Agitation gives birth to creation.”
-- Terry Tempest Williams -
“The time had come to protest with the heart, that to deny one's genealogy with the earth was to commit treason against one's soul.”
-- Terry Tempest Williams -
“I am obsessed by the idea of silence. I went through an entire library studying art, artists and their critics, philosophers, too, on the meaning and significance of the color white. I dreamed of white birds and white bears. I thought about the white pages of my mother's journals. I became enthralled with John Cage and his work, 4'33â€, his masterpiece of ambient sound. Rauschenberg, too. And then at some point I let go. What sticks to the soul is what gets placed on the page. Maybe that's the unknown part, the mystery, the power of the empty page.”
-- Terry Tempest Williams -
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“I still have great faith in democracy. I have great belief in the power of community.”
-- Terry Tempest Williams -
“I want to feel both the beauty and the pain of the age we are living in. I want to survive my life without becoming numb. I want to speak and comprehend words of wounding without having these words become the landscape where I dwell. I want to possess a light touch that can elevate darkness to the realm of stars.”
-- Terry Tempest Williams -
“We can try to kill all that is native, string it up by its hind legs for all to see, but spirit howls and wildness endures.”
-- Terry Tempest Williams -
“Faith is not about finding meaning in the world, there may be no such thing -- faith is the belief in our capacity to create meaningful lives.”
-- Terry Tempest Williams -
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“What I fear and desire most in this world is passion. I fear it because it promises to be spontaneous, out of my control, unnamed, beyond my reasonable self. I desire it because passion has color, like the landscape before me. It is not pale. It is not neutral. It reveals the backside of the heart.”
-- Terry Tempest Williams -
“I have inherited a belief in community, the promise that a gathering of the spirit can both create and change culture. In the desert, change is nurtured even in stone by wind, by water, through time.”
-- Terry Tempest Williams -
“Grief dares us to love once more.”
-- Terry Tempest Williams -
“Our sense of community and compassionate intelligence must be extended to all life forms, plants, animals, rocks, rivers, and human beings. This is the story of our past and it will be the story of our future.”
-- Terry Tempest WilliamsSource : Terry Tempest Williams (2008). “Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert”, p.76, Vintage
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“Our kinship with Earth must be maintained; otherwise, we will find ourselves trapped in the center of our own paved-over souls with no way out.”
-- Terry Tempest Williams -
“I wonder how it is we have come to this place in our society where art and nature are spoke in terms of what is optional, the pastime and concern of the elite?”
-- Terry Tempest Williams -
“Choosing with integrity means finding ways to speak up that honor your reality, the reality of others, and your willingness to meet in the center of that large field. It’s hard sometimes.”
-- Terry Tempest Williams -
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“Storytelling awakens us to that which is real. Honest. . . . it transcends the individual. . . . Those things that are most personal are most general, and are, in turn, most trusted. Stories bind. . . . They are basic to who we are. A story composite personality which grows out of its community. It maintains a stability within that community, providing common knowledge as to how things are, how things should be -- knowledge based on experience. These stories become the conscience of the group. They belong to everyone.”
-- Terry Tempest Williams
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