Quotes by Terry Tempest Williams

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

“The danger is in what we codify, commodify, and exploit.”

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

“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...”

“To be read. To be heard. To be seen. I want to be read, I want to be heard. I don't need to be seen. To write requires an ego, a belief that what you say matters. Writing also requires an aching cu...”

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

“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?”

“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 o...”

“It is not possible to satisfy women," a friend said. "We are disturbed if we have children too young. Disturbed if we have then later. Disturbed if we don't have children at all.”

“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.”

“There is comfort in keeping what is sacred inside us not as a secret, but as a prayer.”

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

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

“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. If we refuse to face our shadow, it wil...”

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

“Grief dares us to love once more.”

“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...”

“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. ...”

“When I said, I am my mother, but Im not, I was saying my path would be my own.”

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