429 Quotes by Terry Tempest Williams

When I said, "I am my mother, but I'm not," I was saying my path would be my own.

The time had come to protest with the heart, that to deny one’s genealogy with the earth was to commit treason against one’s soul.

These are difficult time, transformative times- times of extreme actions especially within our national parks. Extreme drought. Extreme fires. Extreme development with extreme policy shifts needed in the name of global warming. The world is changing dramatically, both ecologically as well as politically. But I believe our greatest transformation as a species will be spiritual. The word “we” must include all species.

I write about nuclear tests in Refuge – “The Clan of One-Breasted Women.” With so many of the women in my family being diagnosed with breast cancer, mastectomies led to one-breasted women. I believe it is the result of nuclear fallout.

What needs to be counted on to have a voice? Courage. Anger. Love. Something to say; someone to speak to; someone to listen.

I don’t think of myself as an American; I see myself as a human being.

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.

Reading has not only changed my life but saved it. the right picked at the right time – especially the one that scares us, threatens to undermine all we have been told, the one that contains forbidden thoughts – these are the books that become Eve’s apples.

Every day, I walked. It was not a meditation, but survival, one foot in the front of the other, with my eyes focused down, trying to stay steady.