Terry Tempest Williams Quotes

Beauty is transformed over time, and not without destruction.

My voice is born repeatedly in the fields of uncertainty.

Not everything is meant for all to hear.

I admire how she protects her energy and understands her limitations.

To hear something asks very little of us. To listen places our entire being on notice.

Perhaps the most radical act we can commit is to stay home.

When Emily Dickinson writes, “Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul,” she reminds us, as the birds do, of the liberation and pragmatism of belief.

The only book worth writing is the book that threatens to kill you.

Who wants to be a goddess when we can be human? Perfection is a flaw disguised as control.

The Japanese have a word - aware - which, in my understanding is, again, that full range - both the joy and the sorrow of our life. One does not exist without the other. And I really feel that.

I think the whole idea of home is central to who we are as human beings.

I believe capitalism will eventually be replaced by a communitarian ethic where the rights and care of all beings will be taken into consideration, not just the greed of a corporate few.

Democracy is an insecure landscape.

To write requires an ego, a belief that what you say matters. Writing also requires an aching curiosity leading you to discover, uncover, what is gnawing at your bones.

Pico Iyer describes his writing as "intimate letters to a stranger," and I think that is what the writing process is. It begins with a question, and then you follow this path of exploration.

Home is where we have a history.

The pain that we feel when we are making love with someone is that we know it will end. It's that paradoxical response of joy and suffering.

Revolution is not something outside of us, but inside us, begging for our engagement every single day.

I think about capitalism, consumerism, our consumptive nature as a species approaching the 21st century. I certainly don't have the answers.

Abundance is rooted in community, not individualism. Abundance is what is before our eyes, but we cannot see when we are blinded by greed.

I think we are living a life without specificity, and then our lives become abstractions.

I feel that within the Mormon culture there is a tremendous amount of fear - of women's voices, of questioning of authority, and ultimately of our own creativity.

That is the wonderful ecological mind that Gregory Bateson talks about - the patterns that connect, the stories that inform and inspire us and teach us what is possible

I can't imagine a secular life, a spiritual life, an intellectual life, a physical life. I mean, we would be completely wrought with schizophrenia, wouldn't we?

I worry, that we are a people in a process of great transition and we are forgetting what we are connected to. We are losing our frame of reference.

What I mean by "An Unspoken Hunger." It's a hunger that cannot be quelled by material things. It's a hunger that cannot be quelled by the constant denial.

I think my heart breaks daily living in Salt Lake City, Utah. But I still love it. And that is the richness, the texture.

My family lives all around me. We see each other daily. It's very, very complicated. I think that families hold us together and they split us apart.

Hopefully there will come a time when I have no words, when I can honor and hold that kind of stillness that I so need, crave, and desire in the natural world.

Community is extremely intimate. When we talk about humor, I love that you know when you're home because there is laughter in the room, there is humor, there is shorthand. That is about community.

I think I must be worried all the time - maybe that is the other side of joy, you know, holding that line of the full range of emotions.

I am a Mormon woman, I am not orthodox. It is the lens through which I see the world. I hear the Tabernacle Choir and it still makes me weep.

When I said, "I am my mother, but I'm not," I was saying my path would be my own.

It is where we embrace our questions. . . . Can we listen with our whole beings, not just our minds, and offer our attention rather than our opinions?

We're human, this is our world, and I think we learn that that which is most personal is most general. And so, in a sense, we disappear into this larger world.

The only thing I have done religiously in my life is keep a journal. I have hundreds of them, filled with feathers, flowers, photographs, and words - without locks, open on my shelves.

I grew up in a culture in which it was a sin for a woman to speak out.

When I write, I put one foot in front of the other. It's an act of faith. I just follow my heart.

I will never be able to say what is in my heart because words fail us, because it is in our nature to protect, because there are times when what is public and what is private must be discerned.

I come from a culture that embodies the need to convert others to "the truth." The Mormon Church has one of the largest missionary programs in the world. That does not interest me.

Storytelling is the oldest form of education.

I feel like we are at a time of great creativity if we choose to embrace it as such, if we choose to engage the will of our imaginations and imagine another way of being in the world.

In the early days of the Mormon Church, stewardship toward the land was a priority. It was a matter of survival in the desert.

Words empower us, move us beyond our suffering, and set us free.

We are taught not to trust our own experiences. Great Salt Lake teaches me experience is all we have.

I believe every woman should own at least one pair of red shoes.

memory is the only way home.

The moment Eve bit into the apple, her eyes opened and she became free. She exposed the truth of what every woman knows: to find our sovereign voice often requires a betrayal.

The choices and decisions we make in terms of how we use the land ultimately affect our very DNA. Environmental issues are life issues.

Mythmaking is the evolutionary enterprise of translating truths.