A Quote by Terry Tempest Williams

John Lilly suggests whales are a culture maintained by oral traditions. Stories. The experience of an individual whale is valuable to the survival of its community. I think of my family stories-Mother's in particular-how much I need them now, how much I will need them later. It has been said when an individual dies, whole worlds die with them. The same could be said of each passing whale.

Terry Tempest Williams

Quote Topics

Been Community Could Culture Die Dies Each Experience Family How How Much Individual John Later Maintained Mother Much My Family Need Now Oral Oral Tradition Particular Passing Said Same Stories Survival Them Think Traditions Valuable Whale Whales Whole Whole World Will Worlds

Quote Author

Terry Tempest Williams
American - Author
Born: September 8, 1955

Whales in mid-ocean, suspended in the waves of the sea great heaven of whales in the waters, old hierarchies. And enormous mother whales lie dreaming suckling their whale-tender young and dreaming with strange whale eyes wide open in the waters of the beginning and the end.

D. H. Lawrence

I walk outside and scream at the top of my lungs, and it maybe travels two blocks. A whale unleashes his cry, and it travels hundreds or even thousands of miles. Every whale in the ocean will at one time or another run into that song. And I figure whales probably don't edit. If they think it, they say it...Whale talk is the truth, and in a very short period of time, if you're a whale, you know exactly what it is to be you.

Chris Crutcher

Great stories happen all around you every day. At the time they’re happening, you don’t think of them as stories. You probably don’t think about them at all. You experience them. You enjoy them. You learn from them. You’re inspired by them. They only become stories if someone is wise enough to share them. That’s when a story is born.

Paul Smith

Remember on this one thing, said Badger. The stories people tell have a way of taking care of them. If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive. That is why we put these stories in each other's memories. This is how people care for themselves.

Barry Lopez

We need to put limits on how much an individual, group or business can spend on influencing an individual legislator or a whole set of legislators. Look at the vast sums that the NRA spends on getting all legislators to be soft on gun control. Legislators find it hard to refuse the NRA's largess when they need contributions to their political campaign wherever they can get them.

Philip Kotler

A whale is as unique as a cactus. But don't ask a whale to survive Death Valley. We all have special gifts. Where we use them and how determines whether we actually complete something.

Max de Pree

Must whales and dolphins be subjected to deafening noise that will cause more than 3.5 million instances of temporary and/or permanent hearing loss? For species that depend on hearing for survival - to find food, migrate, and communicate - any hearing loss could be catastrophic. As one scientist noted, a deaf whale is a dead whale.

Pierce Brosnan

Moreover, it is so important that people have the opportunity to share their stories and have them documented. There have been large-scale oral history projects after many events, from September 11th to Hurricane Katrina. Many oral history projects are much more confined, but equally valuable. We can learn about different working conditions, living conditions, trauma experiences and much more through oral history.

Patricia Leavy

If they had only themselves to consider, lovers would not need to marry, but they must think of others and of other things. They say their vows to the community as much as to one another, and the community gathers around them to hear and to wish them well, on their behalf and its own. It gathers around them because it understands how necessary, how joyful, and how fearful this joining is. These lovers, pledging themselves to one another "until death," are giving themselves away, and they are joined by this as no law or contract could join them.

Wendell Berry

You know, I didn't write my books for critics and scholars. I wrote them for students and artists. When I hear how much my work has meant to them--well, I can't tell you how happy that makes me. That means that this great stuff of myth, which I have been so privileged to work with, will be kept alive for a whole new generation. That's the function of the artists, you know, to reinterpret the old stories and make them come alive again, in poetry, painting, and now in movies.

Joseph Campbell

I have a tattoo on my foot that says 'it's a whale' in Japanese, because Japanese people kill whales. My stuffed whale was like most children's teddy bear. I took it with me everywhere. I slept with it. I couldn't live without my whale.

Skylar Grey

To me, these biblical stories are just so many fish stories, and I'm not specifically referring to Jonah and the whale. I need indisputable proof of anything I'm asked to believe.

W. C. Fields

Stories--individual stories, family stories, national stories--are what stitch together the disparate elements of human existence into a coherent whole. We are story animals.

Yann Martel

I've heard stories of other people that are similar stories to me - their mother or father passing away. People have come out to me on Instagram. It's amazing that they can tell me and confide in me. I always want to take the time and write these long messages telling them how much that means to me.

Amber Mark

There's a hunger for stories in all of us, adults too. We need stories so much that we're even willing to read bad books to get them, if the good books won't supply them.