429 Quotes by Terry Tempest Williams

My family lives all around me. We see each other daily. It’s very, very complicated. I think that families hold us together and they split us apart.

I know, that Rilke quote – “Beauty is the beginning of terror” – I think about that a lot. It’s that realization that we are so small, and yet we are so large in our capacity to relate to the beauty of things.

Our rivers are shrinking. Our lands are blowing away. And our lawmakers from our president to our legislators, both federal and state, are in denial of the one hard fact: We must change our lives, our politics, our beliefs, our actions, if we are going to survive.

Today majesty is the length from where I stand to the summit of the mountain we are climbing. This mountain has majesty and hold its own authority above all others.

When one woman doesn’t speak, other women get hurt.

We hold the moon in our bellies and fire in our hearts. We bleed We give milk. We are the mothers of first words. These words grow. They are our children. They are our stores and poems.

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.

To this day, my spiritual life is found inside the heart of the wild. I do not fear it, I court it. When I am away, I anticipate my return, needing to touch stone, rock, water, the trunks of trees, the sway of grasses, the barbs of a feather, the fur left behind by a shedding bison.

There are things within the culture that absolutely enrage me, and for me it is sacred rage. But it’s not just peculiar to Mormonism – it’s any patriarchy that I think stops, thwarts, or denies our creativity.