Terry Tempest Williams Quotes & Sayings

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

We forget the nature of true power. The power within is abundance. The power without is greed. — Terry Tempest Williams

I write to discover. I write to uncover. I write to meet my ghosts ... I write because it is dangerous, a bloody risk, like love, to form the words. — Terry Tempest Williams

There is no one true church, no one chosen people. — Terry Tempest Williams

I can tell that the Greater Yellowstone from the Tetons, to the Lamar Valley where wolves howl and grizzlies roam, acts as my spine, my range of memory that ties me to landscape of Other. And that the ocean from the rocky coast of Maine, to the Florida everglades, to the looming cliffs at Big Sur, sustain me, remind me we are nothing without salt water, wind, and waves. — Terry Tempest Williams

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? — Terry Tempest Williams

Watching the spontaneous acts of kindness, compassion, and generosity, courage, and bravery in the aftermath of the Boston marathon bombings was so deeply moving. It is in our nature to want to help, to serve, to be part of something larger than ourselves. We have a desire to connect with others. We want to make a difference in the world. I would call this a spiritual longing to be whole, interrelated, interconnected. — Terry Tempest Williams

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

We are animal. We are Earth. We are water. We are a community of human beings living on this planet together. And we forget that. We become disconnected, we lose our center point of gravity, that stillness that allows us to listen to life on a deeper level and to meet each other in a fully authentic and present way. — Terry Tempest Williams

I wonder, What is it to be human? Especially now that we are so urban. How do we remember our connection with place? What is the umbilical cord that roots us to that primal, instinctive, erotic place? Every time I walk to the edge of this continent and feel the sand beneath my feet, feel the seafoam move up my body, I think, "Ah, yes, evolution." It's there, we just forget. — Terry Tempest Williams

Wilderness is an antidote to the war within ourselves. — Terry Tempest Williams

I could not separate the Bird Refuge from my family. Devastation respects no boundaries. The landscape of my childhood and the landscape of my family, the two things I had always regarded as bedrock, were now subject to change. Quicksand. — Terry Tempest Williams

The only book worth writing is the book that threatens to kill you. — Terry Tempest Williams

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

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

In Utah alone, ten million acres are open for business. Their policy is not about the public or the public's best interest. It is about the oil and gas corporations' best interests. — Terry Tempest Williams

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

When Pico [Iyer] talks about home being a place of isolation, I think he's right. But it's the paradox. I think that's why I so love Great Salt Lake. Every day when I look out at that lake, I think, "Ah, paradox" - a body of water than no one can drink. It's the liquid lie of the desert. But I think we have those paradoxes within us and certainly the whole idea of home is windswept with paradox. — Terry Tempest Williams

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. — Terry Tempest Williams

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. — Terry Tempest Williams

The creative process ignites our imagination, and I believe that that same imagination is what will propel us forward with issues of social change. I do think we have to acknowledge that we are a very capitalistic and consumptive nation, and that talk about conservation or issues of sustainability is never going to be popular with the dominant culture because it means checks and balances on an economy that is reserved for the dollar, rather than an economy that honors and respects spiritual resources and the right of all life to participate on the planet, not just our species. — Terry Tempest Williams

She loved the classics and believed in reading out loud. — Terry Tempest Williams

A mother and daughter are an edge.
Edges are ecotones, transitional zones,
places of danger or opportunity.
House-dwelling tension.
When I stand on the edge of the land and sea,
I feel this tension, this fluid line of transition.
High tide. Low tide.
It is the sea's reach and retreat
that reminds me
we have been human
for only a very short time. — Terry Tempest Williams

The middle path makes me wary ... But in the middle of my life, I am coming to see the middle path as a walk with wisdom where conversations of complexity can be found, that the middle path is the path of movement ... In the right and left worlds, the stories are largely set ... We become missionaries for a position ... practitioners of the missionary position. Variety is lost. Diversity is lost. Creativity is lost in our inability to make love with the world. — Terry Tempest Williams

I love the ordered mind of history because it takes us out of the chaos, momentarily, and says, "Ah, so this is the story we are engaged in." — Terry Tempest Williams

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. — Terry Tempest Williams

People talk about medium. What is your medium? My medium as a writer has been dirt, clay, sand
what I could touch, hold, stand on, and stand for
Earth. My medium has been Earth. Earth in correspondence with my mind. — Terry Tempest Williams

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

We come into this world through women: a woman who is spent, broken open, in awe. No wonder women have been worshiped ever since men first saw the crowning of a head, here, legs spread, a brushstroke of light. We are fire. We are water. We are earth. We are air. We are all things elemental. The world begins with "Yes,"
Changing women: we begin again like the moon. We can no longer deny the destiny that is ours by becoming women who wait: waiting to love, waiting to speak, waiting to act. This is not patience, but pathology. We are sensual, sexual beings, intrinsically bound to both heaven and earth, our bodies a hologram. In our withholding of power, we abrogate power, and that creates war. The Australian poet Judith Wright says,
"Our dream was the wrong dream,
our strength was the wrong strength. Wounded, we cross the desert's emptiness
and must be false to what would make us whole. — Terry Tempest Williams

The irony of our existence is this: we are infinitesimal in the grand scheme of evolution, a tiny organism on Earth. And yet, personally, collectively, we are changing the planet through our voracity, the velocity of our reach, our desires, our ambitions, and our appetites. We multiply, our hunger multiplies, and our insatiable craving accelerates.

Consumption is a progressive disease. — Terry Tempest Williams

Stories have the power to create social change and inspire community. — Terry Tempest Williams

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

The sin we commit against each other as women is lack of support. We hurt. We hurt each other. We hide. We project. We become mute or duplicitous, and we fester like boiling water until one day we erupt like a geyser. Do we forget we unravel in grief? — Terry Tempest Williams

I am of this place. Family is a place, and my family s located here, those who are living and those who have passed. I am am settled in the scent of sage, Mount Moran's reflection at Oxbow Bend is more than a mirror of memories; it is the joy found in river otters, a reminder that there are places in the world we can return for peace unchanged. — Terry Tempest Williams

Our species is committing suicide- that is a choice -and in the process, we are causing others pain. — 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

Grief dares us to love once more. — Terry Tempest Williams

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

John Cobb is saying that perhaps we are beginning to see that now as our greed goes completely out of control and everything is seen through money, through corporate power, etc., etc. We know it well. He asked the question, What will be the holocaust that takes us to the next era? - which he describes as "Earthism." — Terry Tempest Williams

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. — Terry Tempest Williams

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

Dare to be burned by the heat of our own ambitious hearts. — Terry Tempest Williams

Sorrow has a voice. It is the cold scream of silence turned inward. — Terry Tempest Williams

Our national parks are memory palaces where our personal histories reside. — Terry Tempest Williams

What every woman knows is that we are remade each time we make love, each time we give birth; each time we feel the blood making its way through our body into our cupped hands, we remember it is our destiny to make change. — Terry Tempest Williams

Members of the Coyote Clan are not easily identified, but there are clues. You can see it in their eyes. They are joyful and they are fierce. They can cry louder and laugh harder than anyone on the planet. And they have an enormous range.
The Coyote Clan is a raucous bunch: they have drunk from desert potholes and belched forth toads. They tell stories with such virtuosity that you'll swear you've been in the presence of preachers.
The Coyote Clan is also serene. They can float on their backs down the length of any river or lose entire afternoons to the contemplation of stone.
Members of the Clan court risk and will dance on slickrock as flash floods erode the ground beneath their feet. It doesn't matter. They understand the earth re-creates itself day after day. — Terry Tempest Williams

Writing becomes an act of compassion toward life, the life we so often refuse to see because if we look too closely or feel too deeply, there may be no end to our suffering. But words empower us, move us beyond our suffering, and set us free. This is the sorcery of literature. We are healed by our stories. — Terry Tempest Williams

Rituals are the formulas by which harmony is restored. — Terry Tempest Williams

I can tell that in Refuge the question that was burning in me was, how do we find refuge in change? Everything around me that was familiar had been turned inside out with my mother's diagnosis of ovarian cancer and with the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge being flooded. — 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 opinions? And do we have enough resolve in our hearts to act courageously, relentlessly, without giving up
ever
trusting our fellow citizens to join with us in our determined pursuit of a living democracy? — Terry Tempest Williams

I believe a politics of place emerges where we are deeply accountable to our communities, to our neighborhoods, to our home. — Terry Tempest Williams

She is reading Zen, Krishnamurti, and Jung, asking herself questions she has never had the courage to explore. Suddenly, the shackles which have bound her are beginning to snap, as personal revelation replaces orthodoxy. — Terry Tempest Williams

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. — Terry Tempest Williams

I believe that when we are fully present, we not only live well, we live well for others. — Terry Tempest Williams

As a writer, I have learned that each time I pick up my pencil I betray someone. — Terry Tempest Williams

Our family has made its livelihood from the land, digging trenches for hundreds of miles cross-country. You could say this is a real paradox, to destroy the land, yet love it at the same time. This is a typical story of Westerners, how we build community through change. — Terry Tempest Williams

Shards of glass can cut and wound or magnify a vision. Mosaic celebrates brokenness and the beauty of being brought together — Terry Tempest Williams

CONVERSATION is the vehicle for change. — Terry Tempest Williams

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 Williams

We have to speak out now on behalf of our community and on behalf of the land and say they're the same thing and say No, we are not rolling over and No, this is not a corporate enterprise. This is democracy in the fullest sense and we must have regard and reverence and those are the cornerstones of a just society. — Terry Tempest Williams

Desert strategies are useful: In times of drought, pull your resources inward; when water is scarce, find moisture in seeds; to stay strong and supple, send a taproot down deep; run when required, hide when necessary; when hot go underground; do not fear darkness, it's where one comes alive. — Terry Tempest Williams

WHAT ARE THE CONSEQUENCES when we go against our instincts? What are the consequences of not speaking out? What are the consequences of guilt, shame, and doubt? — Terry Tempest Williams

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

We find our voice, we lose our voice, we retrieve it, honor it, and hopefully, learn how to share it with others and stand in the center of our power. Translation is a theme. Fear and courage are a theme. — Terry Tempest Williams

Most of all, differences of opinion are opportunities for learning. — Terry Tempest Williams

Opera has the power to warn you that you have wasted your life. You haven't acted on your desires. You've suffered a stunted, vicarious existence. You've silenced your passions. The volume, height, depth, lushness, and excess of operatic utterance reveal, by contrast, how small your gestures have been until now, how impoverished your physicality; you have only used a fraction of your bodily endowment, and your throat is closed. — Terry Tempest Williams

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

The climate change movement is a river overflowing seeping into every nook and cranny. — Terry Tempest Williams

Wilderness is the source of what we can imagine and what we cannot - the taproot of consciousness.
It will survive us. — Terry Tempest Williams

When silence is a choice, it is an unnerving presence. When silence is imposed, it is censorship. — Terry Tempest Williams

Now, in a shift of light, the shadows of birds are more pronounced on the gallery's white wall. The shadow of each bird is speaking to me. Each shadow doubles the velocity, ferocity of forms. The shadow, my shadow now merges with theirs. Descension. Ascension. The velocity of wings creates the whisper to awaken ... .
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

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 write to create red in a world that often appears black and white. — Terry Tempest Williams

words are much stronger than I am. — Terry Tempest Williams

My activism is a result of my love. So whether it's trying to preserve the wilderness in Southern Utah or writing about an erotics of place, it is that same impulse - to try to make sense of the world, to try to preserve something that is beautiful, to ask the tough questions, the push the boundaries of what is acceptable. — Terry Tempest Williams

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

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 Williams

When it comes to words, rather than using our own voice, authentic and unpracticed, we steal someone else's to shield our fear. — Terry Tempest Williams

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. — Terry Tempest Williams

The difference between fear and awe is a matter of our eyes adjusting. — Terry Tempest Williams

We are aching to come together and I think it has little to do with liberal or conservative discourse. I think it has to do with increasing disconnection with what is real and soul-serving. — Terry Tempest Williams

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

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. — Terry Tempest Williams

Suffering shows us what we are attached to - perhaps the umbilical cord between Mother and me has never been cut. Dying doesn't cause suffering. Resistance to dying does. — Terry Tempest Williams

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

In this era where the war on terror is used as an excuse to exploit and plunder, and sell off our public lands, in this new world where the World Bank and World Trade Organization honor corporate rule over local enterprises, and where environmental issues are being usurped in the favor of more jobs and a robust economy, Where is the place for wilderness? — Terry Tempest Williams

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. — Terry Tempest Williams

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

I look at Los Angeles and I ask myself, How can this ever be sustainable? And what are we contributing to that? Because we are all complicit. None of us is without blame. It's so difficult and it's so overwhelming and I think we have to make small choices in our own lives that can loom large collectively. — Terry Tempest Williams

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. — Terry Tempest Williams

The discipline of writing a memoir comes in the editing. This is where I cut, slash, and burn - where my creative mind is transformed into a ruthless one. No word escapes my scrutiny. It is here where I see what boundaries need to be set. — Terry Tempest Williams

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. — Terry Tempest Williams

I think that what I was talking about was that as a woman growing up in a Mormon tradition in Salt Lake City, Utah, we were taught - and we are still led to believe - that the most important value is obedience. But that obedience in the name of religion or patriotism ultimately takes our souls. So I think it's this larger issue of what is acceptable and what is not; where do we maintain obedience and law and where do we engage in civil disobedience - where we can cross the line physically and metaphorically and say, "No, this is no longer appropriate behavior." — Terry Tempest Williams

My mother's journals are a shadow play with mine. I am a woman wedded to words. Words cast a shadow. Without a shadow there is no depth. Without a shadow there is no substance. If we have no shadow, it means we are invisible. As long as I have a shadow, I am alive. — Terry Tempest Williams

The snake who tempted Eve to eat the forbidden fruit was not the Devil, but her own instinctive nature saying, Honor your hunger and feed yourself. — Terry Tempest Williams

The act of civil disobedience is the act of taking our anger and turning it into sacred rage. It is a personal and collective gesture of resistance and insistance. — Terry Tempest Williams

I write as a witness to what I have seen. — Terry Tempest Williams

To withhold words is power. But to share our words with others, openly and honestly, is also power. — Terry Tempest Williams

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. — Terry Tempest Williams

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. — Terry Tempest Williams