429 Quotes by Terry Tempest Williams

We're animals, I think we forget that. I think there is an ancient archetypal memory that still exists within us. If we deny that, what is the cost? So I do think it's what binds us as human beings.

I am not so interested in religion or dogma of any kind. It is too restrictive for me, too organizational, too hierarchical, and too tied up in power and being right. You call it a "rabid evangelism."

Greed is a deprivation of abundance, a hoarding, a constriction of energy.

Lanscape shapes culture.

I believe the personal is the collective. One of the ironies of writing memoir is in using the "I" it becomes an alchemical "we." This is the sorcery of literature.

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.

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.

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.

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.