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Terry Tempest Williams Quotes | Quotes said by Terry Tempest Williams

  • Terry Tempest Williams Quote #1

    A pencil is a wand and a weapon. Be careful. Protect yourself. It can be glorious.


  • Terry Tempest Williams Quote #2

    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. If we refuse to face our shadow, it will project itself on someone else so we have no choice but to engage.

  • Terry Tempest Williams Quote #3

    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 Williams Quote #4

    Agitation gives birth to creation.

  • Terry Tempest Williams Quote #5

    Artifacts are alive. Each has a voice. They remind us what it means to be human - that it is our nature to survive, to create works of beauty to be resourceful, to be attentive to the world we live in.

  • Terry Tempest Williams Quote #6

    Beauty is transformed over time, and not without destruction.

  • Terry Tempest Williams Quote #7

    Buddha says there are two kinds of suffering: the kind that leads to more suffering and the kind that brings an end to suffering.

  • Terry Tempest Williams Quote #8

    But harboring regrets is making love to the past, and there is no movement here.

  • Terry Tempest Williams Quote #9

    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 Quote #10

    CONVERSATION is the vehicle for change.

  • Terry Tempest Williams Quote #11

    Conversation is the vehicle for change. We test our ideas. We hear our own voice in a concert with another. And inside those pauses of listening, we approach new territories of thought. A good argument, call it a discussion, frees us. Words fly out of our mouths like threatened birds. Once released, they may never return. If they do, they have chosen home and the bird-worms are calmed into an ars poetica.

  • Terry Tempest Williams Quote #12

    Creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way.

  • Terry Tempest Williams Quote #13

    Did I have the courage to forge a path

  • Terry Tempest Williams Quote #14

    Each of us has one. Each voice is distinct and has something to say. Each voice deserves to be heard. But it requires the act of listening.

  • Terry Tempest Williams Quote #15

    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 Quote #16

    Finding one’s voice is a process of finding one’s passion.

  • Terry Tempest Williams Quote #17

    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 Quote #18

    Grief dares us to love once more.

  • Terry Tempest Williams Quote #19

    Her body was rounded like earth. Stories. Breath. . . . Her eyes have been painted closed. I understand. To tell a story you must travel inward.

  • Terry Tempest Williams Quote #20

    Here is the world. It is not a safe place, but however frightening and bewildering life may become, we can survive our fears, grab them by the wolf ’s tail as Peter did, and make peace with the world.

  • Terry Tempest Williams Quote #21

    How do we remain faithful to our own spiritual imagination and not betray what we know in our own bodies? The world is holy. We are holy. All life is holy.

  • Terry Tempest Williams Quote #22

    I accept the Organic Trinity of Mineral, Vegetable, and Animal with as much authority as I accept the Holy Trinity. Both are sacred.

  • Terry Tempest Williams Quote #23

    I believe we must do things in our lives for the right reasons, because we enjoy doing them, with no expectation of getting something back in return. Otherwise, we are constantly being disappointed. She moved her turquoise bracelet back and forth on her wrist. So I had two sons, John and Richard, because I wanted to, not because I thought they would rescue me in old age. I got out of all social organizations and clubs in my fifties so I could spend time with my grandchildren, not because they would give something back to Jack and me later on, but because that was what I wanted to do--and I have loved doing it. Believe me, these have been selfish decisions.

  • Terry Tempest Williams Quote #24

    I do not write every day. I write to the questions and issues before me. I write to deadlines. I write out of my passions. And I write to make peace with my own contradictory nature. For me, writing is a spiritual practice. A small bowl of water sits on my desk, a reminder that even if nothing is happening on the page, something is happening in the room--evaporation. And I always light a candle when I begin to write, a reminder that I have now entered another realm, call it the realm of the Spirit. I am mindful that when one writes, one leaves this world and enters another.

    My books are collages made from journals, research, and personal experience. I love the images rendered in journal entries, the immediacy that is captured on the page, the handwritten notes. I love the depth of ideas and perspective that research brings to a story, be it biological or anthropological studies or the insights brought to the page by the scholarly work of art historians.

    When I go into a library, I feel like I am a sleuth looking to solve a mystery. I am completely inspired by the pursuit of knowledge through various references. I read newpapers voraciously. I love what newspapers say about contemporary culture. And then you go back to your own perceptions, your own words, and weigh them against all you have brought together. I am interested in the kaleidoscope of ideas, how you bring many strands of thought into a book and weave them together as one piece of coherent fabric, while at the same time trying to create beautiful language in the service of the story. This is the blood work of the writer.

    Writing is also about a life engaged. And so, for me, community work, working in the schools or with grassroots conservation organizations is another critical component of my life as a writer. I cannot separate the writing life from a spiritual life, from a life as a teacher or activist or my life intertwined with family and the responsibilities we carry within our own homes. Writing is daring to feel what nurtures and breaks our hearts. Bearing witness is its own form of advocacy. It is a dance with pain and beauty.

  • Terry Tempest Williams Quote #25

    I have found what I need most to heal a broken bond is time together—the very thing I avoid is the thing most desired.

  • Terry Tempest Williams Quote #26

    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 Williams Quote #27

    I speculate over some of the Anglo nomenclature of birds: Wilson's snipe, Forster's tern . . . : What natural images do these names conjure up in our minds? What integrity do we give back to the birds with our labels.

  • Terry Tempest Williams Quote #28

    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 Quote #29

    If so, then it was also here where I came to know I can survive what hurts. I believed in my capacity to stand back up and run into the waves again and again, no matter the risk.

  • Terry Tempest Williams Quote #30

    In the desert I often whisper. Junipers are excellent sounding boards. They have been shaped by wing. Rocks seem to care nothing about what I say, yet when I speak to them, they feel porous, capable of receiving my words and taking them in as part of their history of brokenness.

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