A Quote by Terry Tempest Williams

Having lived in Utah all of my life, I can tell that in many ways I know of no place more lonely, no place more unfamiliar. When I talk about how it is both a blessing and a burden to have those kinds of roots, it can be terribly isolating, because when you are so familiar, you know the shadow.
I will tell you that Hillary [Clinton] will tell you to go to her website and read all about how to defeat ISIS, which she could have defeated by never having it, you know, get going in the first place. Right now, it's getting tougher and tougher to defeat them, because they're in more and more places, more and more states, more and more nations.
Most of us lead far more meaningful lives than we know. Often finding meaning is not about doing things differently; it is about seeing familiar things in new ways. When we find new eyes, the unsuspected blessing in work we have done for many years may take us completely by surprise. We can see life in many ways: with the eye, with the mind, with the intuition. But perhaps it is only those who speak the language of meaning, who have remembered how to see with the heart, that life is ever deeply known or served.
When I'm standing in the middle of the salt flats, where you swear that the pupils of your eyes have turned white because of the searing heat that is rising from the desert, I think of my childhood, I think of my mother, my father, my grandparents; I think of the history that we hold there and it is beautiful to me. But it is both a blessing and a burden to be rooted in place. It's recognizing the pattern of things, almost feeling a place before you even see it. In Southern Utah, on the Colorado plateau where canyon walls rise upward like praying hands, that is a holy place to me.
I believe the place of prayer is not only a place where I lose my burdens, but also a place where I get a burden. He shares my burden and I share His burden. ... To know that burden, we must hear the voice of the Spirit. To hear that voice, we must be still and know that He is God.
Place yourself among those who carry on their lives with passion, and true learning will take place, no matter how humble or exalted the setting. But no matter what path you follow, do not be ashamed of your learning. In some corner of your life, you know more about something than anyone else on earth. The true measure of your education is not what you know, but how you share what you know with others.
Obviously there are many, many ways of being an outsider, but having immigrant parents is one of them. For one thing, it makes you a translator: there are all kinds of things that American parents know about life in America ,and about being a kid in America, that non-American parents don't know, and in many cases it falls on the kid to tell them, and also to field questions from Americans about their parents' native country.
People can talk about the death of social life or whatever; it's not necessarily how I see it. It's more musical in the sense, where it's a feeling about the place I live, slash, who I am in the place.
More than any other place, New York is where I felt I belonged. I prefer the Lower East Side to any place on the planet. I can be who I am there, and I couldn't do that anywhere I lived as a child. I never fit in when I lived in California, even though that's where my roots are.
More that members of Senate know about Medicaid, in many ways, the harder it is to make that final decision, because you have got so much information, and you know how many other things are impacted here by one decision here that, five decisions later, has made a big difference in somebody's life.
I didn't know Harlem existed. I didn't know there was such a place, because I grew up in white Queens, where five miles is 100 miles. So I went to the school and, being a smart cookie - as they called us in those days - I had a million questions. How did this place exist? How come I didn't know about it? Why are people living like this? Do they want to live like this?
It seems that the more places I see and experience, the bigger I realize the world to be. The more I become aware of, the more I realize how relatively little I know of it, how many places I have still to go, how much more there is to learn. Maybe that's enlightenment enough - to know that there is no final resting place of the mind, no moment of smug clarity. Perhaps wisdom, at least for me, means realizing how small I am, and unwise, and how far I have yet to go.
(Home is) a place we carry inside ourselves, a place where we welcome the unfamiliar because we know that as time passes it will become the very bedrock of our being.
How I'd like to start a new life in a distant land. Not because of racism or politics. But to be in a place that I knew hardly anything about, in a place where I wouldn't even care to know the prime minister's name. A place where names and faces would have no meaning for me.
Having cancer is a lonely experience. It is the one time in your life that you cannot ask those closest to you, 'What should I do?' It's too heavy a burden to place on another person. This is your life, your decision, and cancer kills.
You just never set roots; you take pleasure in simple conversations, because you know you're not going to have much more than that. It's very isolating, and that can be a good thing.
You know when you're hungry and excited and you feel humble about it? I like that. In the past, when things were not clear, I think I wasn't ... I didn't have my feet on the ground as much, maybe, 10 years ago. So I just feel like this is a good place to be now, to feel that you want to tell stories from this place and that you're excited to tell stories from this place because you know what you love. I know what I love right now.
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