429 Quotes by Terry Tempest Williams

Boundaries are fears made manifest, designed to protect us. I don’t want protection, I want freedom.

There are two important days in a woman’s life: the day she is born and the day she finds out why.

I remember a phone call from a friend of mine who lives along the MacKenzie River. She said, “This is the first year in twenty that the chinook salmon have not returned.” This woman knows the names of things. This woman is committed to a place. And she sounded the alarm.

There is something very sensual about a letter. The physical contact of pen to paper, the time set aside to focus thoughts, the folding of the paper into the envelope, licking it closed, addressing it, a chosen stamp, and then the release of the letter to the mailbox – are all acts of tenderness.

We are a tribe of fractured individuals who can now only celebrate remnants of wildness.

Our fate like the fate of all species, is determined by chance, by circumstance, and by grace.

I was extremely close with my mother and my grandmothers, we shared our lives – fully, honestly – and it was heightened as each succumbed to cancer. Little was hidden between us. No time. And what was hidden, turned inward. I made a vow to speak. Speak or die.

Pico Iyer describes his writing as “intimate letters to a stranger,” and I think that is what the writing process is. It begins with a question, and then you follow this path of exploration.

The Japanese have a word – aware – which, in my understanding is, again, that full range – both the joy and the sorrow of our life. One does not exist without the other. And I really feel that.