Terry Tempest Williams Quotes

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.

The Eyes of the Future are looking back at us and they are praying for us to see beyond our own time.

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.

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.

Despair shows us the limit of our imagination. Imaginations shared create collaboration, collaboration creates community, and community inspires social change.

Finding beauty in a broken world is creating beauty in the world we find.

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

the unexpected action of deep listening can create a space of transformation capable of shattering complacency and despair.

There are two important days in a woman's life: the day she is born and the day she finds out why.

Our power lies in our love of our homelands.

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.

To slow down is to be taken into the soul of things.

Abundance is a dance with reciprocity - what we can give, what we can share, and what we receive in the process.

I think our lack of intimacy with the land has initiated a lack of intimacy with each other. What we perceive as non- human, outside of us, is actually in direct relationship with us.

Greed says there is never enough. Abundance says there is more than enough. Greed closes the door behind itself. Abundance opens the door for others.

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.

The question I'm constantly asking myself is: what are we afraid of? I think it's important for us to follow that line of fear, because that is ultimately our line of growth.

What is the most important thing one learns in school? Self-esteem, support, and friendship.

I write to create red in a world that often appears black and white.

Creativity ignited a spark. In that moment, I saw that art is not peripheral, beauty is not optional, but a strategy for survival.

When one of us says 'look, there is nothing out there,' what we are really saying is, 'I cannot see'.

I wonder about silence. Also about darkness. I love the idea that city lights are a "conspiracy" against higher thoughts.

If you take away all the prairie dogs, there will be no one to cry for the rain.

When you are with a landscape or a human being where there is no need to speak, but simply to listen, to perceive, to feel.

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

Dying doesn't cause suffering. Resistance to dying does.

If a man knew what a woman never forgets, he would love her differently.

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.

Every time we make love to a human being, fully, we are making love to everything that lives and breathes. In that sense it becomes communion. It is a sacrament.

Sometimes you have to disclaim your country and inhabit another before you can return to your own.

I write because it is dangerous, a bloody risk, like love, to form the words, to say the words, to touch the source, to be touched, to reveal how vulnerable we are, how transient.

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

The birds and I share a natural history. It is a matter of rootedness, of living inside a place for so long that the mind and imagination fuse.

No separation between the spiritual and the physical. It is all one.

Landscape shapes culture

A trip to the hospital is always a descent into the macabre. I have never trusted a place with shiny floors.

I think that the only thing that can bring us into a place of fullness is being out in the land with other. Then we remember where the source of our power lies.

What other species now require of us is our attention. Otherwise, we are entering a narrative of disappearing intelligences.

Grief dares us to love once more.

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.

This is the sorcery of literature. We are healed by our stories.

These handwritten words in the pages of my journal confirm that from an early age I have experienced each encounter in my life twice: once in the world, and once again on the page.

If you know wilderness in the way that you know love, you would be unwilling to let it go.... This is the story of our past and it will be the story of our future.

The heart is the path to wisdom because it dares to be vulnerable in the presence of power

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.

Agitation gives birth to creation.

Most of all, differences of opinion are opportunities for learning.

We are wearing coats of trust. When one tells a story this is what happens.

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?

What is evolution if not creative adaptation and the progression of our own souls?