Top 285 Quotes & Sayings by 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.

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.

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

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

There is an art to writing, and it is not always disclosure. The act itself can be beautiful, revelatory, and private.

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

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

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.

I write to make peace with the things I cannot control. I write to create fabric in the world that often appears black and white. I write to meet my ghosts. I write to begin a dialogue. I write to imagine things differently and in imagining things differently perhaps the world will change.

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

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

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

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.

Social change can be seen as a mosaic, taking that which is broken and creating something new.

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

If we fail in this country, it is because we are too timid. If we lose our way in America, it is because we are too complacent. We must become conscious to the real threats before us and act creatively, imaginatively, now. We can no longer look to leadership beyond ourselves.

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.

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

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.

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

Blind obedience in the name of patriotism or religion ultimately takes our lives.

If we are at all sensitive to the life around us, to one another's pains and joys, to the beauty and fragility of the Earth, it is all about being broken open, allowing ourselves to step out from out hardened veneers and expose our core, allowing ourselves to be vulnerable in our emotional response to the world. And how can we not respond? This is what I mean by being 'broken open.' To engage. To love. Any one of these actions of the heart will lead to a personal transformation that bears collective gifts.

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

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.

I am slowly, painfully discovering that my refuge is not found in my mother, my grandmother, of even the birds of Bear River. My refuge exists in my capacity to love. If I can learn to love death then I can begin to find refuge in change.

For me, it always comes back to the land, respecting the land, the wildlife, the plants, the rivers, mountains, and deserts, the absolute essential bedrock of our lives. This is the source of where my power lies, the source of where all our power lies.

I pray to the birds. I pray to the birds because I believe they will carry the messages of my heart upward. I pray to them because I believe in their existence, the way their songs begin and end each day—the invocations and benedictions of Earth. 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.

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.

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

I feel we have to begin standing our ground in the places we love. I think that we have to demand that concern for the land, concern for the Earth, and this extension of community that we've been speaking of, is not marginal - in the same way that women's rights are not marginal, in the same way that rights for children are not marginal. There is no separation between the health of human beings and the health of the land. It is all part of a compassionate view of the world.

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.

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.

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

Each of us contributes our own piece to the whole, each in our own way, each in our own time with the gifts and talents that are ours. You ask about possible vehicles for change: question, stand, speak, act. Engage in unruly behavior. Disturb the status quo. Take direct action. Commit civil disobedience. Make art. Build community. Dance. Sing. Farm. Cook. Create something beautiful and then give it away. Find your own monkey wrench and use it with the force of love. Sharpen your pencil. Vote.

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.

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.

Finding beauty in a broken world is acknowledging that beauty leads us to our deepest and highest selves. It inspires us. We have an innate desire for grace. It's not that all our definitions of beauty are the same, but when you see a particular heron in the bend in the river, day after day, something in your soul stirs. We remember what it means to be human.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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?

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.

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.

There is something very sensual about a letter. The physical contact of pen to paper, the time set aside to focus thoughts, the folding of the paper into the envelope, licking it closed, addressing it, a chosen stamp, and then the release of the letter to the mailbox - are all acts of tenderness.

Find something that matters deeply to you and pursue it. Question. Stand. Speak. Act. Make us uncomfortable. Make us think.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Stories have the power to create social change and inspire community.

For me, it always comes back to the land, respecting the land, the wildlife, the plants, the rivers, mountains, and deserts, the absolute essential bedrock of our lives. This is the source of where my power lies, the source of where all our power lies. 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.

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.